All the buzz
Location: Albany, CA
Date Played: April 25, 2024
Team Size: 2-6; we recommend 2-4
Duration:Between 90 minutes and 3 hours
Availability: Bookable Thursday/ Friday 11:30am-5pm and Saturday 11am-3pm
Price: $10 per team
Ticketing: Private
REA Reaction
Created by escape room enthusiast Stephen Ng, The Solano Human Project epitomized so much of what I love about alternate reality games, or ARGs. A diverse blend of simple puzzles, environmental observations, dead drops, and interactions with local businesses exposed the seemingly limitless potential for wonder and discovery in the mundane, transforming a few blocks stretch of Solano Avenue in Albany, CA into a grand adventure.
Stephen originally designed The Solano Human Project as a one-off gift for a family member before adapting the experience to be playable by the general public. In its current form, the game is still very much a gift to players. Numerous elements are endearingly personalized for each team, and the experience requires active, albeit largely invisible, facilitation.
The Solano Human Project built on a strong history of ARGs in the Bay Area, especially paying homage to The Jejune Institute and the Erstwhile (formerly Elsewhere) Philatelic Society. The sense of humor was equally a product of the local culture, with myriad Bay Area- and Silicon Valley-inspired puns and references. The gameplay and narrative explored what it means to be human, juxtaposed with the implications and possibilities of artificial intelligence. Generally more playful than profound, this theming provided a versatile framework for delightful, exciting, and impressive interactions. Though the experience was largely facilitated through an automatic texting system, there were a substantial number of physical interactions with some surprisingly high production quality.
I wish there existed more experiences like The Solano Human Project — creative hybrids of ARG, street quest, escape room, treasure hunt, and puzzle hunt elements, involving both digital and physical elements, playable by a small team, and available more or less on-demand. In contrast, most larger community-driven ARGs tend to have a steeper barrier to entry and less hands-on interaction per player.
Yet there's good reason why there are few such experiences: they're incredibly difficult to run and maintain on an ongoing basis. Urban environments are constantly shifting, it can be challenging to ensure enthusiastic participation from all employees of local businesses, and there's some level of risk in asking players to retrieve physical objects hidden in public à la letterboxing or geocaching. The Solano Human Project was truly a passion project and overcame these obstacles in part by forgoing any profit, requiring a mere $10 per team to cover a handful of small purchases at participating businesses.
Above all, The Solano Human Project was an excuse to explore a cool area through a unique, personal lens. It was the sort of magically unsustainable experience that's unlikely to exist for very long, let alone at all. I highly recommend giving it a visit before that magic dissipates into the ether.
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