Designing escape games: convergence between narrative, didactic and technology

Abstract

Digital narratives have gained popularity in technology-mediated educational proposals, both in the design of hypermedia and transmedia materials, as in the configuration of immersive and performative environments. Currently, one of the most popular formats is the escape game. This paper analyzes the design of the educational escape game ‘Lost in 2050’, created for the workshop ‘Escape games in education’ of the Usina of Experiencias form Education and New Technologies Project of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (in Argentina). Design decisions evidence was given from the formats in which narrative was constructed; the way in which immersion was propitiated and how this process is sustained during the game experience; the underlying didactic in the approach of the content and the tasks proposed by the challenges; and finally, the technological configurations on the basis of the navigation diagram of the educational escape game.
The theoretical approach of the analysis recovers the concept of educational escape game and the particularity of its design, which is related to the pertinent didactic decisions that allow a group of target people to acquire knowledge from a playful and collaborative learning experience. This paper develops conceptual precisions concerning the three structuring elements of any educational escape game design: the narrative universe, the didactic decisions and the technological
configurations.