Tobit, from NewVenture Games. This is from Kakassia, in Russian central Asia. I never heard of Kakassia either. Credit to David McCord for noticing and putting out this game. It's not like he was sitting at the table listening to the rules in Kakassian or Russian.
 
 

Thinking out loud. Escape The Room - Essen. Games, distractions, spending your money, food, navigation, the friction of crowds, nice games that can go out of stock if you're not quick, meeting people, bathrooms, spending more money, carrying stuff. Language barriers. For booth people and content creators, you have considerations like meetings, sales and supplies, people need to be in booths, sometimes money gets stolen.
 

1: Have the spider rush across the grass. Sound nice, but having the spider move straight rather than chaotically flopping involves some challenging engineering. Also it's difficult, at least for me, to attach string to the ends of the spider. This uses part of a coat hanger hammered in the ground, and a keychain ring for the string to slide through.

There might be a crazy solution to the straight issue. String attached to the front and the back of the spider, and the string is in a fairly tight loop across some grass.
 

2: Have the spider at the most two feet away from the trigger. The spider quickly but quietly moves forward and down (and maaybe goes back up some). Simpler engineering, we don't have the issue of the spider moving straight, tied in the middle of the spider. This is what a spider does, and the movement of the legs is more natural. Genuine and scary experience, in theory. But in practise? Working on this one. A bungee cord yanks back, with a (likely invisible) string that goes through a loop yanks forward and down.
 

3: Spider jumps from the garden to the bottom of the railing on the steps next to the front door.

Pro: This would make a great experience and a story to pass on. The spider looks both visible and creepy by the bush in the garden, staring up at an angle. The spider would pop up - think of the facehugger in the movies - and lands at the bottom of the railiing, staring up, not too far from the trigger. Because it's at the bottom of the rail, you would not see the more artificial bottom of the spider. The railing might make the trigger engineering easier.

Con: The power side of things would be a headache. Where exactly would it go? Things can go wrong when the spider goes to the bottom of the railing. For example, it could be flipped over.
 
 
 
 

Some lesssons recently learned: 1: Keep the attachment (between the string and the front of the spider) raised, not headed to the ground. 2: Keep the spider straight somehow.

Moving toward twisted elatistics rather than bungee cord. Mostly because of the nature of the movement, but there would also be less stress on the invisible string. But how would I attach a twisted elastic to a string?

Is there an alternative to the chocolate bar trigger, such as a tripwire?
 
 
 
 

Should we try the egg sac? Scary, but too many problems.

Having a carrot stuck in the ground as a trigger would be odd, but mechanically good. Do you want to feed the spider a carrot? By the way, that's another reason to use twisted elastics, less pressure on the trigger.

Pulling a raised spider from the front will make the spider flop around. Right? Testing shows that the straight problem has probably resolved itself.