Digital Escapes. The Importance of Spatiality in Game Design

This OCW course serves as a demonstration course for creating Escape Room games. The goal of the course is to explore practical and theoretical questions about how digital games represent, implement, and construct space. 

The purpose of the project module "Digital Escapes. The Importance of Spatiality in Game Design" (https://ifm.blogs.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/) is to explore practical and theoretical questions about how digital games represent, enact, and construct space. The connections between digital games and space will be explored theoretically, while considering the importance of the design process and strategies for thinking about and creating games.
The module aims to take a creative, practical and theoretical perspective to gain deeper insight into the medium and the relationship and potential tension between spatiality and digital games.

The project the students worked on was the design, prototyping, and playtesting of a digital (VR) Escape Room. Escape rooms are known for providing the opportunity to teach various content in a playful way. They explored one of the theoretical frameworks for understanding space in relation to digital games and used it as a (theoretical) foundation for the Escape Room. In preparation for designing the digital Escape Room, they played, analyzed, and compared selected console and virtual reality games in the seminar. These hands-on experiences supported discussion and critical reflection of theory. A game design perspective was then introduced and applied as they worked on the project. 

The course lasted about a month, so students had three blocks of two sessions and online phases.