# The Vanishing Act

- Year: 2025
- Category: Escape room
- Client: Escape World Group
- Role: Lead concept and story, puzzle design, spatial design, lighting & tech
- Canonical version: https://diedetap.com/en/work/vanishing-act/

**The Vanishing Act is an escape room about stage magic where you don't watch the tricks - you perform them. You put a rabbit in a box, run swords through it, open it again... and it's empty.**

The puzzle and the illusion are the same thing here, and that made this the hardest room I've ever designed. Every action has to work twice: as a mechanism, so the game can move on, and as an act, so it feels like you're the one enchanting the audience. Meanwhile the room does what every magician does: it consistently steers your attention the wrong way, while the real work happens somewhere else.


## Le Théâtre de Miracles
The theatre of illusionist Cornelius Conrad, who vanished without a trace during his final performance in 1908. Now, years later, the building is slated for demolition, and you're the last one allowed in, to file a report. In the foyer everything still stands ready, as if the show could start any minute.


## The dressing room
From the foyer you land in the world behind the act: Conrad's own dressing room. Mirrors, props and souvenirs from a life on tour. Every dusty object might reveal a story.


## Zoltar
The dressing room is also home to Zoltar, a self-built animatronic fortune teller: face, movement, housing and controls all from my own workshop. Whatever he tells you, you'll most likely need further in.


## The lighting bridge
Higher up in the building hangs the lighting bridge: dark, pipes, cables, switches and bare brick. This is the part of a theatre the audience never sees, the machinery every show runs on.


## The stage
And then you're standing where Conrad stood, among his props, with the auditorium in front of you. Normally you watch a magic show from the seats; here you perform the tricks yourself. That's where most of the design work went: every action had to become an act, and still simply stay a puzzle.