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ARctic Escape: Promoting Social Connection, Teamwork, and Collaboration Using a Co-Located Augmented Reality Escape Room

Theodore Knoll, Amna Liaqat, Andrés Monroy-Hernández

TL;DR

This paper tackles accessibility barriers of physical escape rooms while preserving social interaction through AR. It introduces AR Arctic Escape, a co-located two-person AR escape room playable on smartphones via Snapchat Lens, designed to foster social connection and teamwork. An evaluation with four dyads shows that shared AR play promotes discussion and collaboration, though entirely virtual content can disorient some participants. The work provides design insights on leveraging co-location and asymmetric information in AR to support leadership dynamics and broaden AR adoption, with future work extending to stranger pairs and more complex puzzles.

Abstract

We present ARctic Escape, a co-located augmented reality (AR) escape room designed to promote collaboration between dyads through play. While physical escape rooms provide groups with fun, social experiences, they require a gameplay venue, props, and a game master, all of which detract from their ease of access. Existing AR escape rooms demonstrate that AR can make escape room experiences easier to access. Still, many AR escape rooms are single-player and therefore fail to maintain the social and collaborative elements of their physical counterparts. This paper presents ARctic Escape, a two-person AR escape room with clues emphasizing player interaction and teamwork. We evaluated ARctic Escape by conducting semi-structured interviews with four dyads to learn about participants' interpersonal dynamics and experiences during gameplay. We found that participants thought the experience was fun, collaborative, promoted discussion, and inspired new social dynamics, but sometimes the escape room's reliance on virtual content was disorienting.

ARctic Escape: Promoting Social Connection, Teamwork, and Collaboration Using a Co-Located Augmented Reality Escape Room

TL;DR

This paper tackles accessibility barriers of physical escape rooms while preserving social interaction through AR. It introduces AR Arctic Escape, a co-located two-person AR escape room playable on smartphones via Snapchat Lens, designed to foster social connection and teamwork. An evaluation with four dyads shows that shared AR play promotes discussion and collaboration, though entirely virtual content can disorient some participants. The work provides design insights on leveraging co-location and asymmetric information in AR to support leadership dynamics and broaden AR adoption, with future work extending to stranger pairs and more complex puzzles.

Abstract

We present ARctic Escape, a co-located augmented reality (AR) escape room designed to promote collaboration between dyads through play. While physical escape rooms provide groups with fun, social experiences, they require a gameplay venue, props, and a game master, all of which detract from their ease of access. Existing AR escape rooms demonstrate that AR can make escape room experiences easier to access. Still, many AR escape rooms are single-player and therefore fail to maintain the social and collaborative elements of their physical counterparts. This paper presents ARctic Escape, a two-person AR escape room with clues emphasizing player interaction and teamwork. We evaluated ARctic Escape by conducting semi-structured interviews with four dyads to learn about participants' interpersonal dynamics and experiences during gameplay. We found that participants thought the experience was fun, collaborative, promoted discussion, and inspired new social dynamics, but sometimes the escape room's reliance on virtual content was disorienting.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 12 sections, 2 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. ARctic Escape System
  4. Evaluation
  5. Results
  6. Collaboration and teamwork came easily to participants, and sharing the experience with a friend increased enjoyment
  7. Co-located play helped participants communicate, and asymmetric visual information led to heightened curiosity and created teaching opportunities
  8. Participants liked the immersion provided by AR and had fun interacting in the space in new ways, but experiences from the physical world did not transfer seamlessly to an AR setting
  9. Discussion
  10. Limitations
  11. Conclusion
  12. Interview Questions

Figures (2)

  • Figure 1: A typical flow of the ARctic Escape as players work to complete the escape room. Note that the clues do not have to be solved in linear order, but players often solve easier clues first. (A) Players begin by exploring the room. (B) Players find parchment, which may have a hidden purpose. (C) Players discover how to read clues on the parchments using a torch. (D) A timed hint appears to help players solve the previous riddles. (E) Players recognize the icicle keys must go into ice keyholes, but fail to properly insert the keys. (F) Players simultaneously insert the icicle keys into keyholes, solving the escape room.
  • Figure 2: Features of the escape room that let the game be played anywhere (A) and promote collaboration (B and C). (A) Players enter the escape room and encounter lore for the game and a description of the controls. (B) A player independently inserts an icicle key into one of two ice keyholes within the room. Because their teammate is not simultaneously inserting another key into the other keyhole, the icicle turns red and vacates it. (C) Both players simultaneously insert icicle keys into unique ice keyholes (only one keyhole is depicted). Because the players collaborate through synchronized insertion, the icicle turns green and fills the keyhole, triggering the end sequence.