Escape room ELT Week 4 2020: Game Design
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This document discusses the design of an English language learning escape room game. It lists sources on game design and an approach to designing ELT escape room games, including setting learning objectives, developing a story, designing puzzles, and playtesting. It then provides an example narrative for a missing Mayan mask mystery and suggests follow-up activities like role plays and report writing. Finally, it addresses considerations for the game design like ensuring a balance between language learning outcomes, narrative coherence, and puzzle difficulty and engagement.
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Escape room ELT Week 4 2020: Game Design
- 1. Escape Room ELT Live Escape Rooms Escape Room game design graham.stanley@gmail.com https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com
- 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78rPt0RsosQ WIRED by Design: A Game Designer Explains the Counterintuitive Secret to Fun
- 3. Learning from game designers http://bogost.com https://schellgames.com https://www.raphkoster.comhttps://www.theoryoffun.com
- 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78rPt0RsosQ WIRED by Design: A Game Designer Explains the Counterintuitive Secret to Fun
- 5. Approach to ELT LERG game design 1) Learning Objectives / language to be learned or practised 2) Story / setting 3) Puzzle design - maximise time learning/practising language 4) Check: disguised test / gamified exercises? (i.e. is it fun?) 5) Check: not just fun (i.e. will students be learning?) 6) Play Test: (difficult? Follow the path through the ER?)
- 6. Flowcharts, frameworks and maps
- 8. The missing Mayan mask
- 26. Inside the pouch you find… the Mayan mask! Now…what do you do?
- 27. What next? Debrief Back at Fix It, you meet with your supervisors to tell them what happened and who you think was responsible for stealing the Mayan mask. Who stole the mask? Why? Discuss in groups together and then report to everyone your theory.
- 28. Wait a minute…! If one of the guests stole the mask, how come it was still in Enrique’s apartment? Who stole the mask? Why? What do you think the pólice will do when they arrive at the apartment? Who was your mysterious client? What Information about the mask / suspects are you going to give the pólice?
- 29. The real story behind the mask Enrique has money problems and decided to report the mask missing in order to claim on insurance. While being interviewed by the police, they asked to search his apartment. He had to agree, but contacted Fix It to find and remove the mask before the pólice had time to arrive. He had hidden the mask in the apartment, but knew the pólice would find it if they searched. Fortunately, Fix It found the mask and so the police returned to the Information Enrique gave about the suspects.
- 30. Follow-up activities Role-play interviews Students take the role of one of the suspects (and Enrique) as they are being interviewed by Police Alibi (game) Two of the suspects are accused (Criag and Patricia), but claim they have an alibi at the party. They are interviewed to see if their alibi holds. Report writing The students choose a character and write a report of what happened at the party
- 31. Design of the game Language learning outcomes Start here. Important that the main purpose of the ER is to give students the opportunity to receive language input / practise. Genre / setting / narrative Detective story with a twist – Information gaps / mystery to pique student curiosity / encourage discusión – important to have coherent narrative. Puzzles I didn’t want students to be stuck for long on the puzzles – difficulty, variety and number needs to be sufficient to engage but not too much to frustrate or take up too much time.
- 33. Escape Room ELT Live Escape Rooms Escape Room game design graham.stanley@gmail.com https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com
Editor's Notes
- Today we are going to look at Escape Room game design. We’ll be doing this by looking at a live Escape Room game I designed for the classroom called The Mystery of the Mayan Mask.
- One game designer I thinks is worth Reading and listening to is Ian Bogost. I first heard of Ian Bogost when I became interested in gamification in the language classroom. In this video, he provides an important word of warning for us.
- Before I talk through the example I created, I’d like to encourage everyone to learn from other game designers, and the design of other games, and not just Escape Room games. Here are a few I personally have learned from.
- One game designer I thinks is worth reading and listening to is Ian Bogost. I first heard of Ian Bogostwhen I became interested in gamification in the language classroom. In this video, he provides an important Word of warning for anyone trying to make their lessons fun.
- Before I talk through the example I created, let me outline my approach to designing a live ER for the classroom, which ive come to through trial and error.
- There are lots of tools that you can use to help you with your design. The game mode canvas is an interesting brainstorming tool that allows you to think through the ifferent elements of game design bfore you get started – I have thought it woul dbe useful to develop this model into something for ELT LERGs – any takers?
- The gamification mode canvas is an interesting brainstorming tool that allows you to think through the ifferent elements of game design bfore you get started – I have thought it woul dbe useful to develop this model into something for ELT LERGs – any takers? So, now onto the design of my ELT LERG…
- Scenario: You are all members of an organisation called ‘Fix It’ that offers a service to “solve problems no matter how difficult or dangerous”. You have been contacted by a client (confidential, anonymous) who needs you to recover a mask that has been reported as stolen. You have been sent to the house of the Spanish diplomat Enrique Chábeli, who is currently not at home. Apparently the mask has been hidden somewhere in the room you are currently in. To help you, you have been given the briefing that was given to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) this morning. As you look for clues, you are told that the CID detectives are on their way to the house to search for the mask. You have thirty minutes to find it before they get there.
- Scenario: To help you, you have been given the briefing that was given to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) this morning. Please speed read the first half of the CID briefing and take note of any information you think may be necessary. NOTE: In class, with students, I would ask them to ask me questions about this and also check their understanding of vocabulary, etc.
- Scenario: Here is the second half of the CID briefing. Unfortunately, we were not able to secure a copy of the details of the guests, but it is known that Enrique wrote profiles of each of the 6 guests as part of the pólice investigation, and so we hope he has copies of these somewhere in his apartment. Please speed read the second half of the CID briefing and take note of any information you think may be necessary. As you look for clues, you are told that the CID detectives are on their way to the house to search for the mask. You have twenty minutes to find it before they get there.
- Of course, unlike Escape Rooms for entertainment, you’ll be in a classroom and the students Will have to pretend it is an apartment. You could use props to make it more like an apartment, and so you have places to hide clues, or you can hide the clues in the space you have, which is what I have chosen to do in this game. Imagine you are students in this classroom (pretending it is an apartment) – where would you look?
- On the teacher’s desk, one of you finds a letter (first half above)
- The second half of the letter
- Underneath a desk you find a clear plastic bag with an assortment of pieces in it. Piecing it together forms the image of a bearded man. There’s something on the back of some of the pieces.
- Turning the image over, you find the words ‘red lock’ and the numbers 519 written on the back
- You find one of the profiles of the guests taped underneath a chair
- Another profile taped under a chair
- And another one
- A fourth profile taped under a chair
- One of you finds the fifth profile
- Under the litter bin you find a locked bag with a folder inside it. The lock is red and has a 3 digit combination.
- You unlock the combination and find the last guest profile. Why was this one locked up? What is special about it?
- Pinned to the blackboard are two pieces of black card with strange looking runes on them which one of you finds.
- If you cut (or bend) the cards and put two of the halves together, they spell out a message you can read
- You go to the clock and find it has a secret compartment. Inside is a locked bag with an object in it. The lock is a golden 3 number combination lock.
- You realise the number that unlocks the bag is on the last suspect file you found. Inside the bag is the missing mask! You have managed to find the mask before the police arrive.
- The students have solved the puzzles and have escaped the room, but there are follow up learning opportunities you can take advantage of. First of all, a debrief – the “Fix It” agents need to tell their supervisor what they have found, how they found it and what they think has happened. Then…give everyone a copy of all the documents at this point and ask them to work in groups to discuss the questions?
- You realise there is more to this tan first meets the eye. Ask the students to continue to discuss the questions.
- The real story Don’t tell the students this – let them decide on their own theories of what happened and what happens next.
- There are a number of different follow-up activities to the escape room that can be done in order to practise speaking / writing
- Here are some notes on how I went about designing this ELT Escape Room
- It helped me look at the sequence of the game in order to see better the overall picture. Although this is depicted as a linear game, there are some things that could happen at different points (i.e. the order players find things), but this does not realy matter. Even if the players find the locked pouch they cannot get to the mask without opening the other locked pouch to find the combination. Hints: If students are having difficulty, tell them they can ask you for hints. Suggested hints include: telling where students to look if they haven’t found a clue / giving them a hint that they need to cut the black cards to read a secret message / that the combination for the golden lock is on one of the guest profiles / etc.