Guidelines for the development of Escape Room genre games utilizing the emotion-based MDA framework and its application on the Logic Gates project

Abstract

The maturing and growth of the game industry made stagnant genres get back into popularity, as it is the case of Escape Room. This process increased the expectations related to the quality of games that were being developed, something that is directly connected to the enjoyment that the player will experience through the product. The enjoyment is a result of a variety of emotions in different intensities that the player goes through while playing the game. However, there is a lack of research, articles and information in how to think, plan and develop the emotions intended to be transmited to the player by the designer, especially in the Escape Room genre. Thereby, this article suggests alterations on the MDA framework, indicating which mechanics and dynamics should be inserted for the player go through the intended feelings, proposing a emotion based MDA framework. This framework is utilized to propose guidelines for the development of games in the Escape Room genre. And then those guidelines were applied to the production of a Game Design Document of an educational game called Logic Gates.