Smith and the Storm

It is the dead of night. A raging storm lashes the coast and the water keeps rising. Hotel Smith, usually a safe haven for travelers, has become an island of stone and wood, surrounded by churning water. Roads have vanished, dikes have burst. You are trapped together with other guests, scattered across different rooms of the hotel. There is only one hope left: an old emergency transmitter at the reception desk.

Rescue services are heading out, but they don’t know who is still trapped here. Only if you can work together to transmit the correct distress signal can a rescue boat reach you before the water floods the hotel. But time is running out. The transmitter is damaged. Information is scattered across different rooms. No single team has everything. Only by working together can you survive.

"A box of archival photos kicked off Smith and the Storm. On day one, we sifted through the images, picked our favourites, and built a collage. The phrase "hotel café restaurant Smit" jumped out, so Mr Smit became our lead, and the flooding our theme. We then dug into flood stories and archival visuals online, including the watersnoodramp (the North Sea flood of 1953), and shaped it into an escape room", says Team Orange. The game incorporates the value of human dignity, as the game is about cooperation between different people even in scary situations. The game focuses on the importance of helping others despite the subtle differences between us.

Smith and the Storm was originally created by Gabriël Arts, Sanne Houwers, Tristan Bozarov, Duncen Krul, third-year CMD students from the Immersive Design specialisation at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, who worked together during the fourth EPIC-WE Cultural Game Jam in the Netherlands, and later matured in collaboration with DROPSTUFF MEDIA. DROPSTUFF MEDIA is based in Hilversum, Netherlands and is a pioneer in media design and creates immersive and interactive public experiences.