Reusable Unity-based Puzzles for the Escapp Educational Escape Room Platform

Maja Cosic1[/], Sonsoles López-Pernas2[0000-0002-9621-1392], Aldo Gordillo3[0000-0001-9785 4827], Enrique Barra3[0000-0001-9532-8962], Alexandra Santamaría-Urbieta4[0000-0003-0935-0616], Milos Kostic1[0009-0005-0912-9518], Miljan Milosevic1,5[0000-0003-3789-2404]
1 Belgrade Metropolitan University, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia
2 University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu 80130, Finland
3 Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain,
4 Universidad Internacional de La Rioja, 26006 Logroño, La Rioja, Spain
5 Institute for Information Technologies, 34000 Kragujevac, Serbia miljan.milosevic@metropolitan.ac.rs
DOI: 10.46793/eLearning2025.225C

 

Abstract. Educators have shown growing interest in escape rooms, as they engage students while fostering teamwork, leadership, creativity, and communication. Consequently, educational escape rooms are emerging as a novel form of learning activity that seeks to enhance students’ learning through immersive and highly engaging experiences. This paper presents a novel approach to designing reusable educational puzzles within Unity and integrating them seamlessly into the Escapp platform for creating educational escape rooms, as part of the IGLUE project. We describe the workflow that enables educators to configure customizable puzzle instances via Escapp’s interface—each instance accessible through a unique URL that exposes configuration data in JSON format. Four distinct Unity puzzles have been developed according to a flexible, parameter-driven architecture, enabling them to adapt dynamically based on educator-defined configurations. During runtime, the Unity game fetches the JSON data to instantiate and render the puzzle, while solution validation occurs via secure API communication with Escapp—puzzle attempts are sent back to the platform for validation, and correct solutions trigger automatic notifications of completion. This bidirectional integration supports modularity, reusability, and real-time feedback and learning analytics, enhancing the design of escape room-style learning scenarios in a scalable and extensible way.

Keywords:  Educational escape rooms, Escapp platform, reusable puzzles, game based learning.

Acknowledgments. This work has been co-funded by the European Union through the Erasmus+ Programme as part of the project “Implementation of game-based learning using escape rooms” (IGLUE) (Reference: 2024-1-ES01-KA220-HED-000256356). Co-funded by the European Union. The opinions and viewpoints expressed are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Spanish Service for the Internationalization of Education (SEPIE). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

References:

  1. Veldkamp, A., van de Grint, L., Knippels, M.-C. P. J., & van Joolingen, W. R. (2020). Escape education: A systematic review on escape rooms in education. Educational Research Review, 31, 100364. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2020.100364
  2. López-Pernas, S. (2024). Educational escape rooms are effective learning activities across educational levels and contexts: A meta-analysis. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 17, 711–724. https://doi.org/10.1109/tlt.2023.3328913
  3. Lopez-Pernas, S., Gordillo, A., Barra, E., & Quemada, J. (2021). Escapp: A web platform for conducting educational escape rooms. IEEE Access: Practical Innova-tions, Open Solutions, 9, 38062–38077. https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2021.3063711
  4. Pan, R., Lo, H., & Neustaedter, C. (2017). Collaboration, awareness, and communi-cation in real-life escape rooms. Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems – DIS ’17. the 2017 Conference, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.1145/3064663.3064767
  5. Warmelink, H., Mayer, I., Weber, J., Heijligers, B., Haggis, M., Peters, E., & Louwerse, M. (2017, October 15). AMELIO. Extended Abstracts Publication of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play. CHI PLAY ’17: The annual symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in https://doi.org/10.1145/3130859.3131436 Play, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
  6. Williams, P. (2018, March). Using escape room-like puzzles to teach undergraduate students effective and efficient group process skills. 2018 IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference (ISEC). 2018 IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference (ISEC), Princeton, NJ, USA. https://doi.org/10.1109/isecon.2018.8340495
  7. Wu, C., Wagenschutz, H., & Hein, J. (2018). Promoting leadership and teamwork development through Escape Rooms. Medical Education, 52(5), 561–562. https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.13557. medical
  8. Guckian, J., Eveson, L., & May, H. (2020). The great escape? The rise of the escape room in education. Future https://doi.org/10.7861/fhj.2020-0032 Healthcare Journal, 7(2), 112–115.
  9. Lathwesen, C., & Belova, N. (2021). Escape Rooms in STEM Teaching and Learn-ing— Prospective Field or Declining Trend? A Literature Review. Education Sciences, 11(6), 308. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11060308.
  10. Makri, A., Vlachopoulos, D., & Martina, R. A. (2021). Digital Escape Rooms as Innovative Pedagogical Tools in Education: A Systematic Literature Review. Sustaina-bility: Science Practice and Policy, 13(8), 4587. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13084587
  11. Fotaris, P., & Mastoras, T. (2019). Escape rooms for learning: A systematic review. In Lars Elbaek, Gunver Majgaard, Andrea Valente, Saifuddin Khalid (Ed.), Proceed-ings of the 13th European Conference on Games Based Learning (ECGBL 2019) (pp. 235–243). Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited.
  12. Taraldsen, L. H., Haara, F. O., Lysne, M. S., Jensen, P. R., & Jenssen, E. S. (2022). A review on use of escape rooms in education – touching the void. Education Inquiry, 13(2), 169 184. https://doi.org/10.1080/20004508.2020.1860284
  13. Vorderobermeier, A., Abel, J., & Sailer, M. (2024). Theoretical foundations and approaches in research on educational escape rooms: A systematic review. Education-al Research ReviewVolume 44, August 2024, 100625.
  14. Reinkemeyer, E. A., Chrisman, M., & Patel, S. E. (2022). Escape rooms in nursing education: An integrative review of their use, outcomes, and barriers to implementation. Nurse Education Today, 119(105571), 105571. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2022.105571
  15. López-Pernas, S., Gordillo, A., Barra, E., & Quemada, J. (2019a). Examining the Use of an Educational Escape Room for Teaching Programming in a Higher Educa-tion Setting. IEEE Access, 7, 31723–31737. https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2019.2902976

 

Izvor: Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on e-Learning (ELEARNING2025)