The second part of our two-part interview with the team from the Knightmare Geek Week episode: Stuart Ashen, Daniel Howell, Phil Lester and Emma Blackery.
See the first part of our interview.
This article contains spoilers about the YouTube Geek Week episode. Why not check it out first?
How hard was the Geek Week dungeon?
We discussed with the team how the difficulty of the game compares with how easy it looks on TV.
The team unanimously state that the game is much harder to play than it looks. As Stuart says, "It looks pretty hard, to be honest".
"It's very very difficult to control the dungeoneer," says Dan.
"When there are tiny spaces between life and death, you can't be even slightly rotated. Otherwise you step into a world of pain and death."
The Geek Week episode didn't show any riddles, which were common in previous quests. The team seemed quite thankful for this, and suggested that they may not have done so well if they'd had to answer riddles.
However, it's worth pointing out that the team figured out what to do with the IGNITE spell rather quickly.
- Emma: "I actually thought of the idea of an unlit fuse before that room came up"
Perhaps then, the team wouldn't have fared as badly as they might think. It's also worth pointing out that they spotted the "FEET" solution fairly quickly in the final room.
"Slice me, Dice me"
Which brings us on to that fateful room. We asked them for their thoughts involving the final puzzle.
The team say that at first they had no idea what the letters meant. However, they spotted the word "feet" and then applied it to the riddle, which is to say that they worked backwards from seeing the solution.
Of course, there's no right or wrong way to solve a riddle and this way is as good as any other.
- Phil: "We thought that the jumps were going to be hard and then we saw the axes."
- Emma: "I leapt off the bench and probably said many expletives."
- Phil: "I think we didn't really anticipate just how far the jumps were."
Well, okay - there's no denying that. The final jump was a little weak and, having jumped from the middle of the stepping stone, there isn't really any way that Stuart could have made it.
However, from our perspective, the jump looks like it's too big to take a large, careful step across and it's hard to control just how far you jump when blind. The room therefore looks like it's a particularly tricky one.
Definitely one to keep if a future series gets commissioned!
Most satisfactory?
I'm pleased that we managed to squeeze in a spectacular death.
So, did the team think that their death was fair, and were they happy with the ending?
The team agree that the death was fair. There's no real denying that axes made them panic and react a little too quickly, which, as Stuart points out, was exactly the point.
Dan was curious as to whether there was a pattern to the axes that should have been worked out. However, this is of course, virtually impossible to determine from the Geek Week filming.
As for the ending they wanted?
- Dan: "I'd rather have died than be frozen... I'm pleased that in 25 minutes, we managed to squeeze in a spectacular death."
And that's real dedication.
Find out more
You can find more from the team at their YouTube channels:
