Nick Postma only arrived in Australia about five years ago from the Netherlands and after a successful career in IT he decided it was time for a change. Late last year he sat down and developed a sort of guide tour game: the City Discovery game. This was a combination of a self-guided city sightseeing walk and escape room puzzling, in which up to 5 players work as a team of detectives and need to solve a mystery. The game was to take place in the Melburnian CBD, and the coronavirus 'happened'.
Felled by the lockdown and a hernia operation, Nick changed directions, swiftly.
The City Discovery Game that didn't make it. Source: Nick Postma
"It is completely built from scratch, I took the idea from the Netherlands and basically I started the whole concept here from the storyline, the hints that you get and the actual tasks you have to perform", says Nick.
"I have been in Melbourne for 5 years now and I love the city. So I thought: why not make the game Melbourne themed, and really get people to understand that they have to save their city?"
He used all of his material and research for the City Discovery Game and started building Virtual Escape Rooms, based on the Melbourne cityscape. Most of the virtual escaperooms deal in finding the bomber, thief or murderer with a team of players, using everybody's strong points to solve the puzzle, and all that in a Whatsapp group especially made for the occasion. In one of Nick's rooms the player gets the change to do role reversal and be the 'bad guy', and in a homage to 'bad guys' from yesteryear, Victorian bushranger Ned Kelly also makes an appearance in the game.
Nick is contemplating building a new escape room which covers the whole of the Australian continent and it's history. All this from a Dutch point of view of course so maybe Abel Tasman will pop up in a virtual reality scene...
