  In recent years, Virtual Reality (VR) has found its way into different fields
besides pure entertainment. One of the topics that can benefit from the
immersive experience of VR is education. Furthermore, using game-based
approaches in education can increase user motivation and engagement.
Accordingly, in this paper, we designed and developed an immersive escape room
game in VR to teach building energy simulation topics. In the game, players
must solve puzzles like, for instance, assembling walls using different
materials. We use a player guidance system that combines educational content,
puzzles, and different types of hints to educate the players about parameters
that influence energy efficiency, structural resistance, and costs. To improve
user onboarding, we implemented a tutorial level to teach players general
interactions and locomotion. To assess the user experience, we evaluate both
the tutorial and the game with an expert study with gaming and VR experts
(n=11). The participants were asked to play both the tutorial level and the
escape room level and complete two sets of post-questionnaires, one after the
tutorial and one after the puzzle level. The one after the tutorial level
consisted of NASA-TLX and SUS questionnaires, while after the escape room level
we asked users to complete the NASA-TLX, UESSF, and PXI questionnaires. The
results indicate that the onboarding level successfully provided good usability
while maintaining a low task load. On the other hand, the escape room level can
provide an engaging, visually appealing, and usable learning environment by
arousing players' curiosity through the gameplay. This environment can be
extended in future development stages with different educational contents from
various fields.
