The Event System — Triggers, Conditions & Actions

Every event in EscapeMaker has exactly three parts:

• Trigger — What starts the event. Something that happens in the game: a click, a puzzle being solved, a scene being entered, a timer going off.
• Conditions — Optional checks that must all pass before the actions run. If any condition fails, the actions are skipped entirely. Conditions let you gate behavior — "only do this if the player has the key."
• Actions — What actually happens: showing an object, adding an item to inventory, navigating to a scene, playing a sound, showing dialogue. Actions run in order, top to bottom.

You can attach unlimited events to any object, any scene, or globally. Multiple events on the same trigger fire independently — if three events have the "Object Click — safe" trigger, all three fire when the player clicks the safe.

EscapeMaker has three scopes for events, each suited to different use cases:

Object Events

Select an object on the canvas, then open the Event tab in the right panel. Events added here belong to this specific object. By default the Trigger field pre-fills with "Object Click → [this object]" as a convenience, but you can change the trigger to anything.

Object events are the most common type. Use them for everything that's logically tied to a specific interactive object.

Scene Events

Click an empty area of the canvas to deselect all objects, then open the Event tab. Events added here are scene-level events — they are associated with the scene itself, not any object. Use these for scene entry triggers, timers, and any logic that should run at the scene level.

Global Events

In the toolbar, click File → Global Events. Global events fire from anywhere in the game, regardless of which scene the player is in. Use these for game-wide conditions: picking up a specific collectible, combining two items, detecting when the player has reached a certain score.

The Event Panel for a selected object — Trigger at top, Conditions, then Actions.

When you add an event, the first thing you choose is its trigger. Here is every trigger type available:

Conditions are optional guards. When a trigger fires, EscapeMaker evaluates all conditions in the event. If every condition passes, the actions run. If any condition fails, the entire event's actions are skipped.

Actions are what actually change the game state. They are grouped below by category.

Show / Hide

Object Groups

Select several objects and click + New Group from N Objects in the properties panel to bundle them under a name. Then one action can control the whole bundle at once — handy for revealing a set of clues together or locking a row of hotspots.

Navigation

Inventory

State

Sound

Dialogue

Visual

Game

Actions in a single event execute in order, from top to bottom, synchronously — unless a Wait action or a dialogue box pause interrupts the flow.

Reordering Actions

In the Event editor, drag any action row by its handle to reorder it. The order matters: "Play Sound" before "Wait 300ms" before "Show Object" produces a different experience than all three running simultaneously.

Blocking vs. Non-Blocking Actions

• Non-blocking: Most actions (Show Object, Play Sound, Set State, etc.) execute immediately and the next action starts right away.
• Blocking: Show Dialogue pauses action execution until the player clicks to dismiss. The player also cannot click anything else while dialogue is open.
• Wait: Pauses the sequence for N milliseconds, then continues. Non-blocking from the player's perspective — they can still interact with the game during a Wait, but the action queue is paused.

Example Sequence

This sequence plays when a player solves a puzzle and should feel cinematic:

The sound plays instantly, then 400ms later the key appears (giving the sound a moment to register), then the dialogue box appears after the reveal.

Four actions in sequence — the Wait creates a timed delay between steps.

Let's walk through a complete two-event sequence: opening a drawer to find a key, then using that key to unlock a door.

Setup

• A sprite named drawer on the scene (closed drawer image). Interactive ON.
• A sprite named drawer_open on the same scene (open drawer image). Visibility: Hidden.
• An inventory item defined: Name "Brass Key", ID brass_key.
• A sprite named door on the scene. Interactive ON.
• A scene named "Hallway" to navigate to.

Event 1 — Open the Drawer

Event 2 — Unlock the Door

The player clicks the drawer — the dialogue shows, the key appears in inventory, and the drawer sprite swaps to the open version. Later, the player opens the inventory bar, clicks the key to hold it, then clicks the door — the door unlocks, the key is consumed, and they move to the Hallway.

Scene entry events let you run logic the moment a player enters a scene. They use the Scene Entered trigger and must be added as scene-level events (click empty canvas to deselect objects first, then open the Event tab).

Common Uses

• Play ambient background sound when the player enters a room.
• Show an intro monologue the first time the player visits a scene.
• Trigger a cutscene animation on first entry.
• Start a countdown timer.

Firing Only Once

By default, a Scene Entered event fires every time the player enters the scene — including when they return from a close-up or navigate back. To fire only on the first visit, use a state variable:

1. Add condition: State Equals — variable intro_played equals false (or leave blank, which also evaluates as falsy).
2. As the first action in the event, add: Set State Variable — intro_played = true.
3. Add your remaining actions (show dialogue, play sound, etc.).

On the second visit, the condition "intro_played equals false" fails, so the actions are skipped. The player never sees the intro again.

Global Events are accessible from the File menu and fire from anywhere in the game.