This project from the University of Kansas Natural History Museum and the UC Museum of Paleontology was a 2025 Roy L. Shafer Leading Edge Awardee. The awards—presented each year by ASTC—honor member institutions and/or their staff and volunteers whose work represents exceptional achievement. These awards celebrate efforts that not only enhance the performance of an individual institution but also advance the entire field of informal science learning and engagement. Read more about the awards here.
A strange and mysterious plant is on a rampage! Can you solve the science puzzles to save the world from a leafy green end? This was the mission families tackled in VENOMventure, an escape-style game created to teach phylogenetic thinking. Phylogenetics is an essential component of biological science literacy, but challenging to understand. Immersive games represent an underexplored approach to help learners of all ages overcome persistent misconceptions about evolutionary trees. To investigate this potential, we developed an escape-style game for teaching tree-thinking skills. Designed for use in informal education settings, VENOMventure transports English- and Spanish-speaking families with kids ages 8 and up to a fantastical research facility where they collaborate to unlock a series of evolution puzzles and solve a biomedical mystery. Our research shows that players of all ages make meaningful improvements in their tree-thinking skills while having a blast!
“Dr. Lopez? Leticia? Anyone? You! Our city has been invaded by a hungry venomous plant. Its bite is causing everyone to break out in itchy purple splotches! We need antivenom—but this is a species we’ve never seen before …”
So begins the escape-style game, VENOMventure, which transports learners to a fantastical research facility where they work together to discover an antivenom—while learning foundational concepts in biology. Developed by the University of California Museum of Paleontology and the University of Kansas Natural History Museum, with funding from the NIH-SEPA program, the pop-up game is designed to travel to natural history museums and rural/urban libraries. Small teams play the 20- to 45-minute, game inside a fun, inflatable room outfitted with high-tech props that provide delightful surprises, alongside puzzles that teach about evolutionary trees (Figure 1). Rather than relying on didactic instruction or pre-reading, the game invites learners to solve the puzzles, experiment with different potential solutions and share knowledge with one another. Importantly, the sequential unlocking of puzzles and artifacts, a hallmark of escape games, allows the scientific content of the game to be tiered and layered such that, over the course of the game, players construct more sophisticated understandings of the scientific content. After reflecting on their experience in the game with a facilitator, players receive a comic-laden science activity book to take home, continuing the narrative begun in the game and further extending family interactions around STEM concepts. (This comic is also freely available online in English and Spanish.)
The entire game occupies an 11x22ft footprint and can be packed into five crates and shipped freight from one venue to the next, solving a fundamental challenge for educational escape games: that the significant input of time and resources to develop and build a high-quality, effective experience of this nature may outweigh the educational impact of the game in a single location with a limited market, since it cannot be replayed by visitor groups. The game’s implementation program and small footprint were designed to meet the needs of libraries, which may be the only public space devoted to informal education in certain rural communities, as well as smaller natural history museums, such as university-based collections, which often do not have the staff and resources to host large traveling exhibitions or revamp their own exhibits regularly. The game provides such institutions with a novel but manageable attraction that can draw new audiences and prior visitors. Institutions interested in hosting the game as a rental or in a future grant-funded tour can express that interest using this form.
STEM learning and family fun
Research has established the pedagogical value of educational games of many formats. However, immersive games (e.g., escape games) are increasingly employed in formal and informal learning environments as educational interventions with scant evidence of their effectiveness. Addressing this gap, VENOMventure’s formal evaluation, conducted with 466 participants across two natural history museums and two libraries, found strong evidence that playing the game improves players’ understanding of evolutionary relationships, and that these learning gains persist for 4+ weeks after playing. To our knowledge, this represents the first direct evidence of a non-classroom-based game supporting learning about evolutionary trees, and one of the very few cases in which an escape game purported to be educational has generated clear evidence supporting that claim.
This evidence consisted of pre/post/longitudinal test scores on closed- and open-ended knowledge items, player perceptions, observations, and interview data. For example, on closed-ended items comparing pre- to post-game scores, the number of players scoring zero was approximately halved and the number achieving a perfect score doubled, representing a medium to large effect size.
Results also indicate that the game is an intergenerational STEM learning experience. Players of all ages—including the target age group of 9-13-year-olds, younger children, and older children/adults—demonstrated significant improvements in their understanding of evolutionary trees after playing the game. In one memorable episode, a family pulled a chair inside the game for a grandmother who was “just going to watch.” Within a few minutes, she was up and solving puzzles with her family. Our results also hint at the power of intentionally designed, self-directed experiences in which children and adults work as relative equals to support each other’s learning: We found that groups with child-led or balanced gameplay styles made significantly larger learning gains than groups in which adults took charge, an intriguing result to probe in future research.
What do participants learn?
VENOMventure introduces key principles in phylogenetics, a branch of biology focused on understanding evolutionary relationships.
- Time flows from root to tip on an evolutionary tree
- Branches represent patterns of shared ancestry
- Traits are passed down to descendent lineages along those branches
- The distribution of shared traits among descendents can be used to identify the ancestral branch and timing of an evolutionary trait change on a tree
Players were clearly motivated by the challenge of the game, thrilled by its surprises, and proud of their successes. Reviews of the game include statements like “I’d rate it 12 out of 10. Muchas gracias!” and “The escape room was SUPER well done. I was beyond impressed with how fun and how well made each component was.” Quantitative post-game survey results confirmed this: 100% of adults and 97% of children rated the game as “a lot of fun.”
One surprising finding to emerge from our evaluation was a view of the challenge and length of the experience as key features contributing to the game’s success, rather than programmatic weaknesses to be mitigated. In the game, families spend ~30 minutes intensely engaged with science together, sharing knowledge and ideas to successfully solve challenges that, in many cases, stumped group members at first. Participants frequently suggested that the game could be longer, have more puzzles, or involve another room (currently, players progress through two rooms within the inflatable). They were far from maxed out on the experience and energized to learn more. For many families, this represents an incredibly rare opportunity for extended shared attention to unpacking science concepts, even within informal learning settings.
The learning results described above, when paired with players’ enjoyment of the game, serve as proof of concept of this innovative model and provide motivation for future sites to host the game. Our summative evaluation results are summarized in our prize-winning 2024 ASTC poster, in our project evaluation, and in a manuscript currently under review.
Evolution of the game
VENOMventure was developed through an iterative design process, beginning with a survey of potential host sites to confirm their interest in hosting a STEM education escape game, get basic constraints on the size of the game, and elicit other concerns. We then consulted with an advisory board (Figure 4) made up of museum and library educators, an educational researcher, evolutionary scientists, and an escape game puzzle designer to establish criteria for and select the narrative for the game—subject to change with formative testing.
The next step was brainstorming puzzles that aligned with a set of pre-established potential learning objectives and elaborating on the mission narrative in ways that could contain those puzzles. At this stage of development, we focused on intended player experience and did not constrain our ideas to align with particular technologies that might underpin the puzzles, other than the need to fit inside or on the walls of a contained game space.
We then developed paper versions of the key props and puzzles, and ran multiple days of testing at host sites, making improvements to the game materials and narrative after each day of testing. At this stage, a facilitator used a script to describe the game environment and any interactive features the players’ actions triggered (e.g., “A desk drawer now slides open, and inside you find this scanner gun”). As we refined the puzzles during this stage, we began to envision the sorts of technology that would be used to execute key props and consulted with a technical advisor to get guidance about the most reliable, robust, and reparable approaches to constructing the props.
Figure 4. The advisory board tried out (and successfully completed!) various escape rooms to inform the development of VENOMVenture. [Upper photo]: Satish Pillai, Alex Gurn, Anna Thanukos, Lisa White, Amy Miller, Sarah Dentan; and Room Omega [Lower photo]: Anna Thanukos, Teresa MacDonald, Jack Baur, Folashade Agusto, Amber O’Brien-VerHulst (kneeling), Greta Binford, Elda Sanchez.
We then built rough but functional versions of the tech props and used them in multiple days of testing, including tests with bilingual families. This helped to ensure that the tech worked in real-life and to identify pitfalls to avoid in the final and more expensive version of the props. Again, after each day of testing, we made improvements to the props for functionality, as well as to the narrative and puzzle graphics for clarity and to finetune the timing of puzzles. The modifications we made during this stage, along with the introduction of working physical props, significantly reduced families’ solving time.
Once our formative testing indicated that the game worked well for players, we produced final art for the puzzles and commissioned the construction of custom-built pieces, balancing the dimensions to accommodate family collaboration and meet design standards for accessibility. We installed our already tested tech inside the final props. Finally, we designed the inflatable structure (Figure 5), attending to a) the constraints of prop dimensions and the footprint predetermined by host sites, b) window sightlines to facilitate observation of players by researchers and facilitators, c) wall height to give players a sense of privacy, d) door placement so that players journey through the physical space, and e) an overall feeling of fun and whimsy embodied in the shape of the inflatable and its art. In the first few playtests of this stage, we made changes to the positioning of objects within the room to streamline player experience, as well as minor adjustments to the props. Providing the inflatable as a dedicated space for the game appeared to make a big difference in player experience, and shortened the time to complete the game.
Designing for challenge and success
Through its formative and summative evaluations at libraries and natural history museums, VENOMventure highlights what makes an effective educational escape game, findings that can be redeployed for future efforts. Some of our overall strategies to support learning will be familiar to exhibit designers. These include designing with minimal text and many illustrations, and sizing props and puzzles in ways that support family collaboration. However, other strategies and considerations to emerge from this testing are more specific to this game format. These are outlined below, and a manuscript that more fully describes the design and pedagogical underpinnings of VENOMventure is in preparation.
- Help players get comfortable. Formative testing revealed several challenges that hindered experienced players early on, such as being uncertain about what they were supposed to do in an escape game. We wanted players to feel confident enough to try things when they enter the game and dive into the content, so we developed an introductory game and facilitator script that address these challenges explicitly (Figure 6).
- Go ahead and challenge them. When players, especially kids, gave feedback during formative testing, they often suggested making the game “better” by making it harder or adding more puzzles. After a taste of success, players did not shy away from challenge. Instead, the more challenging the puzzle, the more players seemed to enjoy the experience, provided that they were ultimately successful.
- But make the challenge meaningful! Our focus in the game was on supporting the exploration of difficult STEM content. We reasoned that this was challenge enough for players and that incorporating additional obstacles might distract from this content or be needlessly difficult for those without prior escape game experience. Therefore, we designed non-STEM game components to be pure fun, with clear indicators of how to interact with them, reducing extraneous cognitive load. For example, getting stuck because a particular object went unnoticed was very frustrating for players, while noticing it wasn’t perceived as much of a win. Hence, we eliminated hidden objects from our design. This means that VENOMventure eschews several other escape game tropes such as riddles, subtle pattern matching, and objects discovered early in the game that aren’t employed until the end of the game.
- Check for undesired red herrings. Players overwhelmingly report that the game is lots of fun, but thorough testing was needed to ensure that ‘fun’ details and jokes didn’t become unintended red herrings. To ensure challenges were related to STEM content, we eliminated any ‘fun’ details that distracted players during prototype testing.
- Pay attention to flow. VENOMventure is designed to click along, with players building on their early ‘wins’ with success at bigger and bigger challenges. Players may be slowed down by a challenging puzzle, but our intent was that they not feel stuck or unsure what to do next for more 30 seconds. Spending five minutes studying and discussing a puzzle feels productive if it’s clear that is what you need to do to progress, but spending five minutes wondering what lock a particular key goes in feels like a waste of time. To help achieve this flow, we made the first set of three puzzles easy wins that could be completed in any order, and early in the puzzle arc (Figure 7), we repeated tasks with slight variations to build player confidence and establish a rhythm before increasing the level of challenge. In addition, the game provides “just in time” tools, such that solving one puzzle provides access to exactly what’s needed for the next step of the game.
- Provide substantial support for host sites. A team member visited each site to help with game setup and train facilitators; additionally, each site had advance access to a suite of online resources, including scripts, setup guidelines, reset checklists, troubleshooting guides, and video walkthroughs of setup and game play. In addition, we created draft ads with editable text and set up an online booking system if needed. This support was an important part of the game’s success for host sites. Two rural libraries and one campus natural history museum were interviewed by project evaluators about their experience hosting the game. While they identified logistical challenges such as building access and the investment needed in terms of space and staff/volunteer time to set up and host the game, they felt well supported by the project team. Ultimately, they felt that being able to offer such a unique, engaging, and high-quality educational experience for patrons, and the opportunity it created to connect/re-connect with community members, was worth the effort.
VENOMVenture has already reached more than a thousand players and is poised to extend that reach as it begins traveling to new sites and inspires new implementation and research programs. Fill out this form to express interest in hosting this unique and fun experience.
