Enigma is a graduate student project held at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center. The team will be designing an interactive activity within a role-playing experience.
The whole experience is about the women who worked at Bletchley Park during the World War II period, and contributed significantly to decoding the German army’s ultimate cipher machine – the Enigma. There will be 3 timeframes: During the war, After the war, and After the revelation of their identity. After the war, these women were strictly ordered to hide their involvement in Bletchley Park, even from their own kin. Until later their contribution was publicly recognized, most were leading normal lives. The experience seeks to elicit within the players the contrasting emotions of these women during these time periods.
The activity is the “codebreaking” part of the whole experience, which takes place during the war time period. The players will be asked to collaborate and solve the presented puzzles as a team. The ultimate goal of this activity is to lead the players to the satisfaction of feeling smart and heroic. It is the intention that this will build up the emotion curve towards the end.