Kevin Gress Puzzlescustom designs for any occasion
Escape
Boring
Will you be able to solve
the puzzles in time?
ABOUT KG PUZZLES
Kevin Gress is a personalized puzzle designer located in the heart of Pittsburgh, PA. While he specializes in scavenger hunts, he has experience with ad campaigns, arg’s, puzzle boxes, promotional events, birthday parties, and proposals. Most of his work is for the local escape room he works at, but has begun to seek other projects after recent success with larger clients.
The Process
I begin by researching puzzle themes and interviewing the client to ensure that the puzzle design will be specialized for only them.
01
RESEARCH
To finallize the design, I will begin with the artwork/publication necessary for the expectation we want, whether that be physical art or graphic design.
04
FINAL DESIGN
To ensure the puzzle is not impossible, nor breakable, I will reach play-testers to try their hand at it in order to determine its difficulty matches our expectation.
03
PLAYTEST
Once the idea is locked in my brain, I begin a rough skeleton of the design of the puzzle. This helps the client and myself determine the puzzle's vision.
PUZZLE OUTLINE
02
Projects
Complexity: 5 out of 5
Design timespan: 3 Weeks
Date Designed: May 2019
Client: Escape Room Pittsburgh
The Cube is an interactive puzzle box inspired by escape rooms. It was built to give potential customers a taste of what they would find at Escape Room Pittsburgh . There are three combination locks, each side gives clues to the answers This specific box is themed after each of the escape rooms the client offers.
If interested in purchasing a puzzle cube, I can either create the blueprints or put together the box itself and deliver it for an additional charge.
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Puzzle Box
Complexity: 5 out of 5
Design timespan: 3 Weeks
Date Designed: February 2019
Client: Escape Room Pittsburgh
One of Escape Room PGH’s most popular promotions. The puzzle is inspired by the book Masquerade in which a children’s book lead to an extremely valuable artifact buried in London. There are words around the outside frame of the image with certain letters highlighted/specified. The letters around the outside hold the secret to the location in which an Easter basket was hidden around the city.
Easter Hunt Promotion
Complexity: 4 out of 5
Design timespan: Three weeks (for vacation plan to correspond with puzzle design)
Date Designed: March 2019
Client: Personal
Based on the itinerary that my girlfriend and I decided on for our trip to California this past Spring, I created a few maps with all of the locations highlighted with shapes. I had to do a little tweaking and persuading to add locations purely for puzzle purposes. Once complete, each City/park we visited spelled out a word when looking from above. At the end of our trip in Los Angeles, I took her to a nice dinner and pulled out very similar tourist maps we collected throughout our trip and began marking the locations with a sharpie. I had her connect the dots as I got down on one knee. The same maps are now getting framed to put up somewhere in our house.
Proposal- Hidden Message
Complexity: 3 out of 5
Design timespan: Two Days
Date Designed: June 2018
Client: Ace Axe Throwing (Scavenger Hunt 2018)
The five numbers shown in this image are a series of ISBN 10 numbers for five different books of various genres. To figure out the book it references, a simple google search will suffice. The Underlined number in each ISBN number references the numbered word you would reference when looking up the book title. The solution to this puzzle is therefore a five word phrase.
ISBN Cipher
Feel free to reach out to see the rest of my collection
