Escape the Decision Arena : Designing and evaluating an immersive collaborative gaming experience in a cylindrical environment

Abstract: The Decision Arena in Linköping University contains a 360° cylindrical display with a complementary 360° sound system consisting of eight evenly spaced speakers along the bottom edge of the screen. This paper explores if an immersive game can be developed for such a non-typical gaming environment. The result was a two-player cooperative puzzle-solving game inspired by Escape Rooms where the final product was evaluated through playtesting, questionnaires and interviews by participants. The game was developed using Unreal Engine for the graphics and game logic, SuperCollider for sound implementation, and a custom website was used to control the game, which uses WebSockets to communicate with Unreal Engine. The evaluation results show that most participants found the game immersive and engaging, which points to that it is possible to develop immersive games for the Decision Arena. According to feedback, the most challenging, and sometimes immersionbreaking, aspect of the game was localizing the sound. The evaluation results also suggests that certain sounds are easier to localize in the Decision Arena than others, which led to the conclusion that further research in sound localization is beneficial if more sound-based games were to be developed for this environment.