Project 3: Escape Room

Project Summary

This was a group project in which we used various cryptography techniques to create a challenging escape room. The escape room consists of multiple tasks called "quests", and each quest focuses around varying topics across the textbook, including the internet, software, and hardware. 

Quest Descriptions

The first quest involves a numerical cipher and asks the player to answer 10 true or false statements about concepts throughout the textbook. Upon correctly identifying the true statements, they match it with a set of encoded numbers which can be used to determine the answer. The second quest involves text encoded in binary using the ASCII standard, where the user identifies which of the devices can connect to the internet. The third quest asks about communication platforms, connecting to software and the internet using a Caesar cipher. The fourth quests mentions various programming languages and pseudo code, which are used to write programs. They are written in Morse code and the user must interpret each cipher to determine the correct answer to the quest. Finally, the fifth quest integrates the numerical substitution into various topics throughout the textbook, such as hardware mentioning CPUs and multicore processors.

Reflection

• I was challenged by having to make the quests difficult. Specifically, we aimed for the escape room to take around an hour to solve, meaning the quests had to be difficult yet engaging. Thus, it would not make sense to simply reuse the same encryption techniques over and over again. We also tried incorporating subjects from different parts of the textbook. 

• When my group finished the entire escape room, we decided to try solving it to make sure everything worked properly. When we decoded the desired message and "escaped the room", we felt a sense of accomplishment with our project.

• My group approached the escape room by splitting up each of the five tasks throughout the members in our group. When each member was done with making their quest, another member would try to solve it to make sure it was difficult enough. The hardest part of the process was time, as we knew we only had a little over one hour to finish the project. 

• I certainly learned topics that I brushed over throughout the textbook. When having to find challenging tasks for the solver, not only do the ciphers have to be difficult, but also the content from the textbook shouldn't be obvious or common knowledge.

• If I revisited this assignment, I would divide up the work among our group differently. Rather than assign each person to completely different task, which made our escape room document look inconsistent, I would make sure each project is worked on by a pair of people instead. This way, each part of the assignment is proofread and consistent with the rest of the document.