Visions of the Future

Company Visions of the Future

When I started Enigmatic Events, I had a vision. I wanted to take my experience of running murder mysteries into something more. I thought there was a powerful way to build interesting courses with the use of game play. I wanted to mix up board games, theatre exercises, and creative problem solving. I still have that belief - but I also have a better understanding of what I am good at. And thus where my visions meets what the world wants to see.

This year, I want to build on the base I’ve grown in the last four years.

A metal telescope for our visions

First, We Collaborate

Natasha and I met in a work situation and quickly realized how much we enjoyed bouncing ideas off one another. We discovered as we built our three fringe shows that there is an innate power in co-operative development; and that we work well together. Understanding how we work together will be a continuous process of improvement, but we've built a solid foundation. I know we are both excited to see that develop.

Second, We Create

The next base to build on is new, original creative work. We’ve created a good body of work over four years. These works include original murder mysteries, developed one-act shows, treasure hunts, puzzle sets, card games and role-playing games. Our most popular events by far are the murder mysteries. People love being suspicious of their friends and coworkers!

Our actor-driven mysteries are a form of immersive theatre. It is exciting to write characters and to see how talented actors take them further during a performance. Everyone brings their own ideas to each event. I want to see how we can use this to build new concepts outside of the murder mystery genre. By developing an understanding of what we, our actors, and our audiences enjoy, we can create further thematic events. Our task now is to understand how we engage audiences, and how to get them to have an emotional engagement with the worlds we create.

These explorations will also help us write new murder mysteries with novel twists. Beyond writing for new themes, we will add new concepts that make our events immersive in new ways. If we can engage more people and create more conversations at events between the guests, we have succeeded. We want people to talk, build connections, and foster trust with each other!

Finally, We Puzzle

The final base is building more puzzles. Over the last two years, we have partnered with a puzzle writer in Toronto. Together we have created intricate puzzles for use in Niantic’s game Ingress. The game distributed our work world-wide. Through this collaboration we’ve understood puzzle design better. We understand what people find interesting to solve and what draws players into a puzzle. It was also key to learn how to build many ‘aha’ moments into the solution.

Those latter pieces of fun are key for entertainment. Getting a little brain chemistry surge rewards us humans, making us want to delve further. Feeling a reward helps us get into a flow state, where we can see progress to an end. Entering a flow state during a single activity has shown to have positive effects for the participant beyond the initial action.

So, for me at least, 2020 is a year of growing what I’ve planted already – I don’t want to try all the new things, but get better at things I already do.