Learning concepts and understanding information through play and entertainment has been shown to work. And there are more and more playful proposals that help the youngest to be encouraged with areas such as history. The Museu d’Història de Catalunya offers various family activities of this type aimed, above all, at children up to 12 years of age. Each week, the museum proposes to travel to a different era, with the possibility of discovering curious facts and objects from prehistoric times to the present day. Now, it goes one step further and the Museu d’Història de Catalunya wants to reach adolescents between 12 and 14 years old.
It does so with The Immortal City, a game of ingenuity that will allow young people to compete, in teams, in order to get the most prestigious city. How will they do it? Solving enigmas while taking a tour of the museum’s permanent exhibition that goes through different historical stages: from prehistory and the first settlers of the territory to contemporary Catalonia.
The teams will be made up of groups of between 2 and 5 people and the expected time of the game tour is 90 minutes. Before beginning, the youngsters will receive the instructions and the game guide where they will find the 9 enigmas that they have to solve. Once they start the tour, they will visit each historical period and, in each of them, they will have to solve a challenge, using ingenuity and observing all the elements within their reach.
As an escape room, the participants will have to solve tests, such as crossword puzzles, decipher names or observation games in order to get the numbers that will allow them to continue advancing. The different elements of the permanent exhibition will be key to finding out the solution. For example: “Find the room with the mihrab at the entrance; Before you reach the orchard in the background, stop and look to the left†or “look for the horse that has no rider and look at the wall just in front of itâ€. With indications of this type and solving the linguistic games, the teams will be able to continue advancing.
But that is not all. Because the participants will also have to face dilemmas that will force them to make decisions. In this way, your urbs will develop in one way or another. Depending on the option chosen, the consequences for the city will be different and points will be obtained taking into account areas such as demography, the economy, knowledge and heritage. At the end of the game, the name of the city of each team will be added to a ranking with the points obtained.
The immortal city is a puzzle game created for the Museu d’Història. The creators are Mateu and Martà Lucas Feliu, from the company Tot Jugar. With 20 years of experience in leisure education, the promoters are experts in outdoor games for large groups with the aim of establishing links between the participants and the space. From Tot Jugar they bet on the game as a mechanism to transmit knowledge and generate links.
