The Nightmare of Eveline Shadow

The project
“The Nightmare of Eveline Shadow” began with a unique collaboration between three game designers working in real-life gaming - Alexander Gierholz, Jeroen van Hasselt, and myself. The three of us were drawn together by our shared ambition to create new kinds of immersive experiences, combining the narrative power of theater with game mechanics bolder than puzzle solving. The project began thanks to a crisis - the ongoing pandemic pushed for innovation and motivated the Renaissance Hotel of the Marriott Bonvoy group to offer their beautiful hotel in the center of Amsterdam as a location. This is a first of its kind hotel-hosted immersive experience in the Netherlands, and is likely a signal of the future as the hospitality industry is becoming ever more embracing of experience design. The Nightmare of Eveline Shadow is an original IP, in which I was co-creator, writer, designer, and producer.

The game
The Nightmare of Eveline Shadow is a two hour location-specific theater show and a real life horror game. It takes place on over three floors and 5000 square meters of a real hotel, with players exploring dozens of rooms in the course of the game. Players play in groups of 4 and will encounter a cast of multiple actors on the way. The premise of the story is that horror writer Eveline Shadow was working on her newest novel ‘The Nightmare’ in her hotel room, before she mysteriously disappeared. Ever since, things are off; the emptiness of the hotel begins to feel sinister in a way the off-season can’t explain. As players follow the trail of the writer, reality and fiction seem to blur.. The players are faced with the dilemma - do they dare advance the horror story they find themselves in? The story is inspired by cult classic horror film “The Shining” and by the meta game mechanics of “The Stanley Parable”. The integration of narrative and mechanics provides an experience of psychological horror that doesn’t rely on surprise scares, but on the contrary evokes the dread of walking a path of certain and inescapable doom.