Site Redesign Coming Soon

The last few months have been a gauntlet – multiple weddings (including my own) and my busiest season for work – and now that everything appears to finally be back to normal, I’ve got some thoughts on redesigning the site’s format.

So here’s a preview of what’s forthcoming:

-The site currently has three sections: Escape Room Visits, Commentary/Editorials, and Travel. While those are still key areas, there are a few puzzle-related activities I regularly deal with that don’t fit into any of these buckets.

1. Puzzle Challenges / Web Activities. Red Bull Mind Gamers has been the big one lately, but I’ve also been following the excellent puzzle challenge Rabbit Hole Recreation Services has been putting together every month. I’d like to start collecting in one place descriptions and links to each of these along with the stories I have about each.
2. Home/Video Games. I’ve played quite a few of the escape room home games, and I’ve found some of them much more to my preferences than others. This could be valuable information to share, to help others pick which of these games might make sense for their groups.
3. Geocaching. I’ve been posting regularly about Geocaching as a favorite activity while traveling, and it warrants a unique callout as an activity type.
4. Creative projects, whether they be new riddles or other puzzle-related projects I’m working on.

Since I’ve got a few more types of content, I’ll be restructuring the site to start with a “front page” of most recent content, followed by the content broken out by categories below. I will also be splitting out the full directories of what I’ve reviewed, with links and a “coming soon” list.

Finally, to provide more value with my escape room reviews, I’m going to start tracking a few objective details that players can use to determine how much they’ll enjoy a room. Details like Linear vs. Nonlinear, Tactile vs. Digital, etc. I still don’t like the idea of making subjective claims about rooms I find “good” or “bad” given the role of personal preference, but I can provide more valuable information.

So there’s a lot coming through the pipeline! I’ll be rolling this out piece by piece over the next month or two, so don’t be surprised when the site changes a little!