ERIC HOFF
AOTW
AOTW is a supergroup of creatives that produces immersive entertainment that blends theatre, dance, escape rooms, alternate reality games, night life, and haunted house-style walk-throughs into its own new genre. Comprised of producers Mali Elfman, Derek Bishe, with writers Eva Anderson and Eric Hoff, along with escape room expert Tommy Honton, and power-trio E3W (Natalie Jones, Aaron Keeling, Austin Keeling), AOTW has produced four-day ARGs in New Orleans with the Overlook Festival, 2020’s LA-Times Top Ten Game ARCANA, as well as The Shape of The Night.
(All Of Them, Witches)
The Shape of the Night
AOTW re-grouped in 2023 for a four-night party where each member of the supergroup leaned into their skillset to create a wild night of hard-to-describe dreamlike environments and nightmarish experiences. Combining elements of escape rooms, immersive theatre, craft cocktail bars, drag queen performances, and meditation sessions, The Shape of the Night was as mysterious as anyone’s dreams. The party has been invited to other cities for future productions.
For The Shape of the Night, Eric served as creator, writer, producer, and performer (Mz. Lucie Dittie.)
ARCANA
When the pandemic hit, AOTW pivoted from producing a live experience to an online-only game that was played using Instagram, Twitch, and other online platforms. Players followed Jade, a lonely artist experiencing nightmarish terrors in her house at the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis. As Jade’s life turned upside down, she turned to her followers (the game players) for help to solve mysterious riddles and puzzles that kept popping up in her dreams or nightmares. Played over four full weeks, and culminating in a live-streamed video feed where the users had real agency in choosing the outcome of Jade’s fate, ARCANA was ranked as a Top Ten Game of 2020 by LA Times.
For ARCANA, Eric served as creator, producer, writer, and performer.
The Game at Overlook Film Festival - All Of Them, Witches!
“The Game” is a four-day alternate reality game that takes place in conjunction with The Overlook horror film festival. Played over four days in the city of New Orleans in June 2019, this experience divided players into intensity levels, allowing guests to solve puzzles/riddles/esoterica all day, or drop in and play the game at their leisure between screenings of new films. The Game presented a fiction of two warring covens in New Orleans, highlighting issues related to gentrification and generational divides in a city that is always rebuilding itself. Players criss-crossed the Crescent City, discovering clues to mysteries in old haunts of the Quarter and in homes in far-flung neighborhoods.
For The Game, Eric served as creator, writer, producer, and performer. The Game was the genesis project for AOTW.
