Feb 2020 - Feb 2022
Gloeidraad
Escape rooms
Role
Project management, UX/UI design, Visual design
Tools
Asana, Adobe, Arduino, Draw.io
Lessons Learned
This work sharpened my skills in project management and budgeting, teaching me how to keep complex processes on track and within scope. I deepened my understanding of immersive storytelling and puzzle design, ensuring narrative and gameplay stayed tightly connected. Managing diverse teams — from designers to developers — reinforced the importance of clear communication and collaboration. Finally, hands-on work with code and hardware gave me practical insights that helped streamline production and problem-solving.
Created 40+ physical and digital escape experiences! From concepting to delivery and maintenance. I have worked with a team of developers and designers to deliver a wide range of physical and digital experiences!
The projects have been highly diverse. From an educational experience where we recreated an African village for Wildlands to teach high school students about poaching, to an online multiplayer experience that can be played internationally from home, where players help a secret organization track down a criminal
Wildlands - Rhino Rescue
Add a Title
For Wildlands Adventure Zoo in Emmen, we developed a one-of-a-kind escape experience designed for high school students and family groups. Wildlands wanted a high-end, globally unique attraction where up to 16 players could join the adventure every 30 minutes — with immersion and interactivity at its core.
In most of our projects, we collaborate with prop experts – and Rhino Rescue was no exception. For this interactive experience at Wildlands Adventure Zoo, we partnered with the talented team at Props to bring the story to life.
While they focused on the visual side of the narrative, our team took charge of the puzzles, storyline, and layout. From building physical sets to drafting detailed design documents and syncing through regular creative sessions – this was a full-on team effort.
The result? A hands-on, story-driven experience for high school students, challenging them to outsmart a rhino poacher through teamwork, clues, and clever puzzle-solving.
Google Backstage
For this large-scale project with Google, we created an immersive escape room where players became Google itself. They had to manage and activate key Google functionalities through interactive, physical challenges.
Players operated recommendation algorithms by throwing balls at the right screens to suggest videos, controlled Google Maps by connecting locations, and handled search requests by quickly sorting various objects around a large room.
With a significant budget and close collaboration with Google’s team, this project was an incredible opportunity to build a unique, hands-on experience that brings complex digital systems to life in a fun and engaging way.
The very first customer journey I created in my life was for the Google Backstage experience. Laid out physically on the table in paper sheets, it helped us get a clear overview of the story beats, potential interactive elements, and when they should appear. It was also essential for keeping the overall narrative tightly connected to the gameplay and improved communication with our client throughout the project.
For this room, we needed to bring maps to life — but without relying on screens. Luckily, as escape room builders, we had the physical space to play with. So, we thought: why not take it vertical? It added excitement and a bit of thrill, while keeping everything safe.
We combined climbing elements with map navigation. Players pointed out locations, connected them by forming human chains, and sometimes calculated travel times between points. The experience built up to a big reveal, with a secret door swinging open to unveil the final space.
9 Rooms
From an Aztec temple to a Barbie dreamhouse — 9 Rooms took visitors through nine uniquely themed experiences, all packed into a single escape room concept. Each room had its own vibe, puzzles, and technical challenges.
The project quickly grew way bigger in scope than expected. This made our structured workflow in Asana even more crucial — it helped speed up and improve both assembly and production processes. Every room had clear tasks for paper props, audio, hardware, programming, and design docs, all neatly divided across the team.
The result? A scalable system that brought wild ideas to life — faster and more efficiently, room by room.
As project manager, I relied on a talented team of developers while helping streamline their workflows and processes. For example, I took care of connecting sensors and soldering components on Arduino boards—hands-on tasks that freed the developers to focus on more complex coding and system design. I also managed orders, set up production lines, and was on-site troubleshooting and ensuring smooth installation whenever needed.
Section 39 - Online escaperoom
Section39 is an online escape room designed to improve team collaboration. More than 700 people from various companies have played the experience so far. The platform supports anywhere from 4 to 400 simultaneous players, making it perfect for everything from small teams to large-scale events.
The design is based on a scientific methodology developed by the University of Amsterdam, aimed at fostering long-term teamwork skills. Companies like Bol.com, Rabobank, and the City of Amsterdam have booked Section39 as a team-building tool, while others — like Flow Traders — have used it as part of their onboarding programs.
And most importantly? It's just a really fun experience — teams get to solve puzzles together remotely, laugh a lot, and connect in a meaningful (and slightly mysterious) way.
To bring the interactive cutscenes to life, we used storyboarding to plan each scene in detail — from camera angles and transitions to key dialogue and player choices. Storyboarding helped us align the team early on, spot potential issues before production, and keep the narrative tight and focused. This was essential. It allowed us to create cinematic sequences that smoothly integrated with the gameplay and supported the pacing of the puzzles — all while working efficiently across video, design, and dev teams.
From a design perspective, we focused on creating asymmetric puzzle experiences — giving each player different pieces of the story and encouraging real collaboration. No single person has all the information, so communication becomes key.
We built a custom digital host system to guide players through the experience, making it possible for large groups to play simultaneously. Interactive cutscenes tied everything together, blending narrative and gameplay into one seamless journey.
The result? A scalable, story-driven team experience where every player plays a unique role — whether you're with four or four hundred people.
One example of an in-game cutscene shows an actor from a third-person perspective, attempting to hack into a computer system. During the scene, players vote on how to proceed — choosing between risky shortcuts or safer, slower routes.
With this kind of setup, we aimed to make choices feel meaningful and failure narratively interesting. Instead of simply saying “you’re wrong,” we explored ways to let poor decisions unlock new story beats or shift the tone of the experience. We also experimented with giving earlier choices long-term consequences, hoping to make players feel the weight of their decisions across the full game.
While not everything landed perfectly, these experiments helped push the boundaries of what interactive storytelling in an online escape room could be.
