The Editor is where you build a game. Everything that makes one escape room work — its objectives and hints, the screens players see, the props and locks in the room, the logic that drives the puzzles, and the media that sets the mood — is configured here, one game at a time.
This is the design side of ARC. You build a game in the Editor, then you run it on the control page. The Editor is for owners, managers, and builders setting a room up; it is not the day-to-day screen staff use while a game is running.
Game settings vs. business-wide settings
The Editor configures one game. Things that belong to your whole location — lobby lighting, opening and closing schedules, the hardware connections your gear rides on, and the shared media library — live in System instead. Several features (devices, automations, scenes, media) exist in both places; each page explains the difference and links to its counterpart.
Creating a game
Open the Editor from the top navigation. To start a new room from scratch:
- Select New game.
- In the Create game drawer, enter a Game name — the name shown wherever this game appears — and set its duration and appearance.
- Confirm with Create game. The new game opens on its Objectives tab, ready to build.
From there you work through the tabs, adding objectives and building out the rest of the room.
The Game details drawer
A game’s own settings — its name, duration, status, image, and accent color — aren’t a tab. They live in a Game details drawer you open with the gear button beside the game name, and they save as you type.
The drawer also runs a setup check at the top. It tells you either No setup issues found or how many issues need attention, with a Review link that jumps straight to each one — hints pointing at missing media, devices whose connection was deleted, unfinished auto-complete rules, and so on. Its footer holds Export game and Delete game.
See Game settings for what’s in the drawer and where the rest of a game’s settings now live.
Build in Testing
Set a new game’s status to Testing while you work. Runs in Testing behave exactly like real games but are not recorded, so you can rehearse freely. Switch to Active when you are ready for real groups.
Importing a game
You can also start from an existing game shared as a .arc file — a portable backup of a complete game.
Select New game, then Import game in the drawer, and pick the .arc archive. ARC previews what is inside and flags any conflicts (a game with the same name, media files, or connections that already exist). You decide whether to overwrite or keep what you have, and you resolve any connection and media dependencies the imported game relies on. This is how you copy a room between machines or restore one from a backup.
The Editor tabs
A game is configured across a row of tabs. Each has its own page in this section.
| Tab | What it does |
|---|---|
| Objectives | The puzzles and tasks players solve, their saved hints, groups, the flow map, and the game’s objective and hint settings. |
| Media | This game’s own audio, video, and image files. |
| Displays | The screens players see — countdown, hints, and media — and how they bind to hardware. |
| Devices | The props, locks, and sensors inside this room, and their reset behavior. |
| Logic | In-room automations and scenes, plus the game’s variables and constants. |
| Panels | Small live panels staff open on the control page to watch a puzzle or prop. |
| Cameras | The layout of this game’s camera wall (Vision add-on). |
Two tab names worth knowing
The Logic tab holds four sub-tabs — Automations, Scenes, Variables, and Constants. The Cameras tab only appears when the Vision add-on is installed and enabled.
Game status
Every game has a status that decides how it behaves and whether it appears for staff. You set it in the Game details drawer, under Basics.
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Active | The game is live. Sessions run normally and are recorded to your history and Insights. |
| Testing | The game runs normally, but nothing is saved. Use it while building or rehearsing. |
| Retired | The game is hidden from the control page and Dashboard. Its configuration is kept, but staff can’t run it. |
Retire rather than delete
When a room goes out of rotation, set it to Retired rather than deleting it. The build is preserved, so you can bring it back — or export it — later.
Exporting and importing
A game can be saved out to a .arc archive and brought back in elsewhere. This is how you move a room between machines, share a build, or keep a backup.
- Export game, at the bottom of the Game details drawer, writes a
.arcarchive containing the game’s configuration and its game media. You can optionally include the shared media and connections the game depends on, so the archive is self-contained. - Import game, in the Create game drawer, reads a
.arcarchive, previews conflicts, and lets you overwrite or keep existing items and resolve dependencies (see Importing a game above).
Where to go next
- Game settings — the Game details drawer and where each game-wide setting lives.
- Objectives — build the puzzles and their hints.
- Displays — the screens players see.
- The control page — run the game you’ve built.