Lockwood Immersive Blog: May 2026

Have you been outside today? We sure have! The warm weather hitting Toronto is wonderful after a cool and wet spring. Some days it can be hard to focus on all the work we need to do without getting distracted by the great outdoors. Let’s take a look back at what we’ve done in May - but after that, we’re going for a nice walk in the sunshine!

Updates

Unsurprisingly, a huge amount of May’s work has been adding finishing touches and polish to Shades of Grey. We’re so happy to not have to keep it a secret anymore! We really think this game is unique among experiences in Toronto (and beyond?) and we’re excited to start running it in earnest.

Until then, we’ve been finalizing graphics, planning some more intense marketing through the summer, building props, touching up the set, and so much more. Seeing game elements go from quick paper mockups to finished products is a very gratifying experience.

A prototype prop (right) goes through the goodification process to become a good prop (left).

Jesse watched some hair cutting videos on YouTube to prepare the game's murder victim. Bryan was helpless to stop him.

One thing we’re personally very excited about is hiring voice actors to perform the character dialogue. For a story-heavy experience like this, having distinctive characters is very important, so we knew we wanted performers from the start - but it took a lot of time to lock down the game script. Now Jesse doesn’t have to voice all the characters himself like he’s running a one-man puppet show!

Apart from Shades, we have a few other contracts in the pipeline, but here’s something that’s a little fun to share.

One of Jesse’s close friends got married in May, and he was asked to make a little puzzle activity for the party. Taking inspiration from the venue (a brewery) and the couple’s dog, he constructed a puzzle trail that involved finding clues in the seating chart, the program - even on some sneaky beer bottle props. Jesse found it great fun to create, and he extends a shout out to his friends J & S on their nuptials!

Wedding guests got a side of puzzles with their entree - talk about filling!

A closeup of the puzzle sheet.

Extracurriculars

With little time and energy outside of our fanatic devotion to finishing Shades of Grey, we didn’t want to travel or blow a ton of money on this month’s extracurricular. Luckily, we remembered that we had a jubensha lying around that we hadn’t had a chance to play yet!

The most fun you can have silently reading in a group.

(Jubensha are tabletop roleplaying mystery games popular in Asia which, in recent years, have started to become more widely available in English-language markets. Check out the People Make Games video for more about jubensha.)

The game we played was Demise of the Pocket Knight from Zed9, based in BC. We obviously can’t say too much about it, since we don’t want to spoil the mystery, but it involves a cool two-layer trick. Each player takes on the role of a university student paying a visit to a local jubensha parlour, plus a role from the jubensha-within-a-jubensha that the characters sit down to play. How meta!

We hosted the game at our office for a cozy night in, ordered some pizza, and had some friends round to give it a go! If their reactions are anything to go by, it was a pretty entertaining night.

Bryan gets put in his place.

Dark truths are revealed! (Or maybe we ran out of snacks.)

Recommendations

This month, Jesse recommends Feline Forensics and the Meowseum Mystery: I was gifted this game by a friend who pointed out that it felt kind of similar to Shades of Grey, with its noir theming, black-and-white colour scheme, and Golden Idol-like blank-filling mechanics. Intrigued, I jumped in and had a fun time unraveling the tangled threads of a strange death at a downtown museum. The game is simple - explore the museum, interrogate subjects, and figure out what happened - and it maintains a lot more of a grounded scope than games like Obra Dinn or Golden Idol. But the writing is tight and fun, the mystery itself is solidly constructed, and there are a thousand and one art history jokes thrown in for the bargain. For anyone looking for a chill, cat-forward mystery experience, Feline Forensics is well worth the time and price tag.

Bryan recommends Dead As Disco: It’s another game that just launched into “early access” that for some reason I keep getting suckered into. I swear this is gonna be the last one (It won’t be). It’s a beat-em-up crossed with a rhythm game. Very simple. Very flashy. You play as Charlie Disco fighting against your old band mates, each who play a specific genre of music. The first 4 bosses embody Punk Rock, Metal, Rap, and K-Pop. The combat mechanics feel extra buttery for those familiar with the system popularized by the Arkham Asylum games, so it’s  simple button presses and combos but now timing is even more important. What’s hooked me this month is that you can import your own music too, so you’ll find me throwing down waves of enemies to Carly Rae Jepson, or more likely Pepe Silvia w/drums.