Babel Systems (Fall 2011)Inspiration: Portal (PC game), Snow Crash (novel by Neal Stephenson), Look Around You (British video series satirically based on in-classroom educational films)
Plot: Babel Systems, a language software company with incompetent but seemingly well-meaning higher-ups, has recently had a huge hiring season. At their employee orientation, the new recruits are split up into teams of 2-4 to test out a mini puzzle hunt that is suspisciously easy. Babel Systems has secretly tricked their new recruits into being lab rats! A dangerous brain-tracking device has locked onto the minds of the unsuspecting solvers who are now being used for research without their informed consent. However, hidden in the mini puzzle hunt's answers is a link to a YouTube broadcast from two brave scientists locked somewhere within Babel Systems' facilities. This scientist duo was tasked with writing this mini puzzle hunt against their will, so they decided to communicate with their unwilling victims through hidden messages in the mini puzzles. This scientist pair has also written more complicated puzzles for the new recruits to solve in order to give them the location of the brain-tracking device so they may deactivate it. As teams continue to solve puzzles, they come closer to finding the device by discovering ways to interact with Babel Systems employees to gain important access key cards. After interacting with the legal department, the R&D laboratory, the director of human resources, and last season's interns/unwilling research participants, the teams gain enough key cards to access the device. In a final runaround puzzle, teams must utilize the symbols on the four key cards to determine how to deactivate the device, thus saving everyone in the company and freeing their fellow recruits. My Role: Karen Monitor, GLaDOS-inspired HR employee who delivers information to players in a foreboding monotone (and narrated the advertisement video) My Puzzles: ![]()
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Poster:
Promotional Video:
I provided the narration for this video in-character as Karen Monitor, the eerily robotic HR employee I played during plot presentations.
The rest of our videos are on the account of user BabelSystems on YouTube. |