Room Escape Artist

Last Contact is a free 3D point-and-click game built in the Mibo game engine. It’s targeted toward scientists and researchers, and the message of the game is likely intended to resonate most with them.

Format

Style of Play:

• 3D point-and-click game

Who is it For?

• Science Learners
• Researchers who have published scientific work

Required Equipment: Computer with internet connection, mouse, headphones

Recommended Team Size: 2-4

Play Time: 30-35 minutes

Price: Free

Booking: play at your leisure

Description

Our team of “consultants” remotely controlled individual avatars on a distant space station. We navigated our avatars throughout the 3D world, following instructions from the station’s computer. Interactive objects glowed a different color when we directed our focus toward them, allowing us to click to interact.

Throughout the game, we were made aware of a multitude of flaws in the scientific process: removal of outliers to skew data, unrepresentative study populations, missing methods in published papers making it impossible to replicate study protocols, and paywalls for relevant scientific papers. Last Contact served as a public service announcement on the importance of open-access research and thorough peer review processes.

Technical Requirements

The website lists various system requirements of your computer. One reviewer’s laptop failed on “Graphics power,” but their experience was still pretty smooth.

Another intended reviewer found that after completing the training, the actual game would not load. They tried numerous times, and the information page said that their internet connection might not be fast enough to play the game. In the end, they weren’t able to write a review.

Christina Rohlf, PhD’s Reaction

Last Contact was a short (30-45 minute) first-person adventure game that contained a few puzzles. The game was tailored for researchers involved with the publication of scientific papers. To this end, some outside knowledge of scientific study design was required to play the game. As a former PhD student who has published scientific work, I enjoyed the irony of several moments throughout the game. However, I would not recommend this game to escape room enthusiasts looking for an online puzzle game, as puzzling was a very minor part of the game. I also had some trouble connecting to the Mibo virtual gathering system used to play Last Contact.

Sarah Mendez’s Reaction

Last Contact was a game with something to say, a something that was surprisingly well-suited for a puzzling medium. As a puzzling experience, it walked the edge of tolerable frustration in its puzzle design, but the scenarios were fun enough to distract me from this issue until all these efforts resulted in a meaningful payoff with the game’s final reveal. I’ve rarely played a game that had such a blunt message. Here, that message offered an epilogue of literary analysis, leading me to rehearse the game beat by beat to understand the connections. The game also offered a legit opportunity to educate ourselves about its perspective. I’m neither a scientist nor a researcher, but I had enough understanding of these disciplines to appreciate what I learned. Overall, it was an unexpectedly educational activity made more impactful by its clever delivery format.

Brett Kuehner’s Reaction

Last Contact has an admirable educational goal of demonstrating how scientific research is hindered when data isn’t shared with others. It attempts to show the effects of “closed science” by having players experience the consequences in a game. Unfortunately, the choice of a limited first-person game engine makes it difficult to do activities that really convey that idea.

The game starts with a slow-paced introduction that gives a bit of backstory and walks players through a few interaction types that will be needed later. After completing the tutorial, the main story begins and players navigate through a spaceship and other environments to complete tasks.

The initial tasks feel like typical escape-style puzzles, which are reasonably fun but not especially novel (though it is the only escape game I’ve played that includes a joke about p-hacking). As the game progresses, the tasks become harder, in part due to specific failures of the scientific process that are being highlighted. In some cases this felt more like a badly designed puzzle than a process failure, at least until the reason was explained at the end. The tasks progress the narrative, which is fairly basic and serves as the minimal glue needed to stitch the puzzle sequences together.

Several of the puzzles involve using an in-game computer with a very limited interface to do “research.” This allows the game to make a valid point about access to research publications, but does not feel enough like actual searching to get the idea across effectively.

The Mibo 3D engine generally works smoothly, though one of our team was unable to join due to some kind of connection issue, even after repeated attempts on multiple devices. Each player’s camera feed is visible as the “face” of their robot. This enhances the sense of team connection, and the design was set up to encourage players to interact with each other.

If you are susceptible to motion sickness from 3D games, as I am, this game might trigger some queasiness. There are no movement settings available to reduce the effects, like jump movement or quick turns. This is true of any game based on the Mibo engine, in my experience.
Ultimately, I think the educational intent would benefit from a different format, perhaps one that feels more like normal computer usage (or at least “movie style” computer usage). As an example, Agent Venture was a multiplayer online game that is much more engaging, with a structure for research tasks that could be used to get the educational ideas across effectively.

Ryan Brady, PhD’s Reaction

Last Contact is an awareness message for good scientific practices wrapped in a very light gameplay wrapper. The most effective messaging is in the post-game space.

The Mibo system is an innovative one, and we appreciated being able to talk “face-to-face,” but there were some motion sickness and control struggles, and we felt like we spent a lot of time just walking back and forth.

Since this game is intended for the scientific community, which happens to include myself, I played with a group of scientists. The level of the message aims a little low for people who have a science degree, but there were publishing jokes and references sprinkled throughout that we appreciated, but most likely wouldn’t land as well with a general audience.

This could be a fun tool for high schoolers or early undergrads who are learning the basics of scientific writing, but there’s not enough game in Last Contact for me to recommend it to anyone else.