What Educational Escape Rooms can Learn from the World's Best Rooms

In the context of playful learning, escape games have the potential to enrich learning experiences through interactive problem-solving and narrative engagement. However, educational escape games differ significantly from the commercial offerings they reference in name and game mechanics. They often draw on the concepts of escape rooms that were popular a decade ago, relying primarily on traditional puzzle types such as code deciphering and number locks. Meanwhile, commercial escape rooms have evolved significantly over the past ten years, now offering highly immersive experiences based on captivating stories, convincing scenographic presentations, and well-thought-out tension arcs. Each year, enthusiasts vote for the top 100 escape rooms in the world. To investigate which best practices from these rooms can be applied to educational games, my master's thesis, which forms the basis of this paper (Neubig 2024) analyzed 38 of these award-winning games in detail. This analysis covered the gameplay, puzzle typology, room design and player guidance, as well as interactions with the game masters. Significant patterns were identified in all these areas that can be utilized in the design of educational games. Simultaneously, it reveals the types of challenges that the world's best games almost entirely avoid, despite their popularity in educational games. The study provides detailed insights into the diversity of puzzle types used, their variations throughout the game, and identifies particularly effective puzzle combinations. Escape games as a method of knowledge transfer have been adopted worldwide in schools, universities, museums, and libraries. They are used in various ways, such as recruitment tools, as orientation aids for institutional services, or to promote specific or generic knowledge and skills (Veldekamp et al. 2020). This work emphasizes the necessity to adapt educational games to the latest developments in the escape game industry if they are to be classified within this genre. In doing so, they can fully leverage the potential of escape games to create an engaging and motivating gaming experience.