Abstract:

The use of Serious Games has expanded to different areas such as training, medicine, psychology and education. Specifically in the latter, multiple positive results were achieved, such as an improvement in the adherence of the students to teaching methodologies, their implication or even academic results, thanks to the fun and exploratory nature of serious games complemented with solid underlying pedagogical strategies.

One subclass of serious games are mixed reality games, which can be characterised according to Milgram’s continuum from augmented reality to augmented virtuality, depending on the predominant presence of the virtual environment or the real world in the game. In our previous work, the explorative strategy of an escape room was used in a game to facilitate the teaching of character writing, with promising results. In real escape rooms, players must leave a place by finding clues and solving puzzles. In a virtual escape room the objective is the same, and although the realistic component of it is lost, more complex strategies and components can be incorporated in the game in a controlled way. In this article, we explore the combination of real and virtual escape rooms in a mixed reality game, in order to create a learning experience characterized by a high level of immersion and exploration.

The game is developed as an enjoyable complement to regular university courses, or to support university events. The goal of the game is for players, students or visitors, to escape from a university building. Hereby, the player is guided to different physical locations by the narrative presented on his smartphone, where various riddles and activities, both virtual (e.g., solve a math equation), physical (e.g., perform a science experiment) or mixed (e.g., use real-world objects/clues in game scenes in the mobile app), are key to escape the building. The game concept, its mechanics, narrative and activities are designed according to constructivist learning theory. Solving puzzles, in conjunction with the process of exploration to escape, requires an active student-centered learning process that fits the learning theory. This allows learners to construct mental models to understand the world around them and achieve more effective learning through the connection with the real world.

From a technical point of view, the game relies on Bluetooth beacons to pinpoint physical locations detectable by the mobile game, and a server-side application, accessible through a web API, that allows the creation and correct retrieval of the georeferenced contents. The game is developed using Unity engine targeting mobile platforms using a plugin to interface with the Google’s Nearby API library.

As example, the mixed reality escape room game was implemented to support the GIS day, an event to promote geospatial technologies and their applications. The game simulates the (hypothetical) situation of being trapped in a building of the university campus, and the player has to move through the different building floors to escape, by solving geospatially related puzzles that require the combination of both virtual and real elements. For example, through physical wayfinding via landmark-based directions in the mobile app, the player is guided to the basement, where the game presents him with an interactive floor map. Exploring the floor, and through spatial reasoning challenges, he must associate virtual with real world objects to find the next clue.

Keywords:

Educational, Serious Game, Mixed Reality, Educational Events, Escape Room, Indoor Location.