Forum Discussion
Escape Room
We've built escape room interactions for clients a few times, but haven't been able to share them publicly. That's why I've taken the time to create this demo.
I created a fictional drug, SynebroVax, and built a scenario where the learner plays a pharmaceutical sales rep preparing for a high-stakes meeting with stakeholders. The goal is to explore the environment, uncover insights, and respond to realistic stakeholder concerns, all within a timed, gamified experience.
It’s designed to show how immersive storytelling, decision-making, and interactivity can turn complex product knowledge into something memorable and engaging.
25 Replies
Very cool, David, and very immersive! How much development effort went into the project, and how much of it was Storyline? How much of it was creating the project assets, such as images?
I had the same question, garythills!
I'm afraid I didn't keep a track of the hours for this one. With it being an internal project I was just fitting it in whenever I had a chance between client projects.
Thanks Gary.
Outside of generating the ideas and the content, I probably spent 70% of the time in Storyline, and 30% on the graphics. With it being an internal demo I decided to use stock graphics to piece together the office scene and some of the incidental graphics that appear during the interaction. That was a big time-saver.
I really tried to lean in to making this accessible, so I spent a fair amount of time inserting alt tags and trying to get the focus order right. Where I would traditionally have used drag and drops I tried to create interactions that could be navigated with a keyboard too. There's a sequencing interaction in there that took quite a while to figure out but it's something I can see making its way in to client projects if it proves to be reliable. My attempts at accessibility won't be perfect, but hopefully they're a welcome start.
The 30 minute timer was created with JavaScript. I cheated and used ChatGPT to help with that. Saying that, there was still a lot of back and forth trying to get it to work correctly, so that still took a chunk of time to complete.
Frustratingly, one of the most time consuming parts was trying to find the cause of a bug. I was really happy with the animation that happens when you click between rooms but it all of a sudden stopped working properly. I had to back track and dig out the old files that are automatically saved in the temp folder to find the last working version. I then had to compare the broken version, with the temp version to look for differences. It turns out that the issue was being caused by the 'stop timer' button that you can see on this screen grab. Once the button was deleted, the animation started to work again!
Thank you so much, David, for publishing your work! What a cool way to impart knowledge. It is very inspiring. And for the learners it's fun and challenging at the same time.
Thanks Roland, I really appreciate the kind words. I don't get a chance to share much of my work due to confidentiality but it's always nice when I find the time to create a demo to share.
Love this! 😃🤩
It really makes what could be a dry topic much more exciting - I found myself checking the clock to make sure I didn't run out of time. 😬
Thanks for the positive feedback, and I'm glad the timer had the desired effect!
This was very engaging and fun to play. I love this creation.
Thank you for letting me know you enjoyed the demo, I appreciate it!
Great work, David - love it!
Thank you!
This is brilliant! Thanks for sharing, David
Thanks! I learn a lot from what other people share so I enjoy sharing my own work too when I get a chance.
That is brilliant, well done. loved the interaction and its just where i think training should be heading in
Thanks! This sort of interaction certainly has its place. The great thing is that with the exception of a little bit of JavaScript for the timer, everything else is built using native Storyline functionality. A lot of examples I see often require modification to the files after courses have been published, but that's not the way I like to work. Those sorts of edits aren't generally something that the majority of people can do, so I like to share examples that are within most people's capabilities.
I think this is such a cool ethos. Thank you again for sharing!
Well Designed.
Thank you!
I love the graphics and interaction. Brilliant. I did get lost in navigation though (obvs not my subject area)!.
I had similar feedback from another tester before releasing the demo so I did change it so that you don't need to answer the questions correctly to proceed.
I'm glad you like the graphics and the interactivity.
