Educational Escape Museum with IoT, Animation and Creative Writing Elements

As museums increasingly compete to engage visitors, innovative methods are needed to deliver knowledge in captivating ways. Escape rooms (ERs) offer an effective solution, combining interactive challenges with educational content to create memorable and engaging learning experiences. This paper presents The Curse of Medusa, an educational escape room designed for a museum context. The game integrates a variety of technologies, including the Internet of Things (IoT), animation, creative writing, and Amazon Alexa, to provide an immersive, multimodal experience. The objective of the project is twofold: to educate participants on a specific historical theme selected by museum experts and to introduce them to modern technological tools. The paper details the design methodology, hardware and software used, and the narrative plot of the escape room, along with an evaluation conducted through questionnaires based on the Experience Pyramid Model. Feedback was collected from archaeologists, adult volunteers, and students. The game includes combinatorial and multi-sensory puzzles that require players to observe, cooperate, listen, read, interact, and engage in tasks such as singing and writing. The use of Amazon Alexa as an Intelligent Personal Assistant (IPA) introduces interdisciplinary interaction elements that enhance gameplay. Experts praised the escape room's originality and balance between education, play, and technology. Although the paper does not present a formal evaluation of learning outcomes, feedback from both experienced and novice players indicated high levels of satisfaction with the game's design, materials, and challenges.