escape game

Ludere Libero !

Salve alumni. Hoc est initium iter tuum ad intelligendum, et libertatis!

Hello students. This is the start of your journey to understanding, and freedom!

GO!

No, you haven’t enrolled on the wrong course. Don’t go away. (You actually can’t …)

You are, in fact, at the start of this year’s English course, but there’s just a slight hiccough, hitch, um … problem.

You, and a lot of other students from our European consortium, EDUC, have fallen down a wormhole.

You’re no longer in Cagliari, Brno or Rennes. You’re in Rome, at the start of our common history, and frankly, things aren’t looking too good for you…

You’ve found yourself in a place known locally as the Amphitheatrum Caesareum, aka the Colosseum.

Your lecture theatre has become a Roman amphitheatre, and you’re no longer following your chosen course. You’re studying at a ludus, which sounds fun but isn’t. It’s a gladiator school.

So, dear student, you’re now a gladiator. And a slave. And you’re programmed to take part in your first munus, which is a gladiator fight. Oops. This is not what you signed up for! You have no idea what you’re in for: what to expect this semester.

So far so good.

You need to get out of here and back to your home university. Because you’ve just started at the gladiatorial ludus, your teachers have made your task easy. They have provided clues for you to find your way back from ancient Rome and find your way around this semester’s English course.

Answer the enigmas correctly and you’ll be freed. Fail to answer the enigmas correctly and you’ll be thrown to the lions, or something equally horrible. Sorry.

To find out what awaits you, click on a type of headwear. You don't need a Sardinian copricapo, or the Breton coiffe, or the Czech kotúč; you'll need a gladiator's helmet.

To move on, you’ll need to think about dates.

In Latin.

You’re in 65 BC. Julius Caesar, the newly elected curale aedile is really keen on hosting gladiator games.

You plan to escape by time traveling forward to 376 AD when Constantine abolished gladiator games.

How many years would you have to travel? Remember to convert your answer into Roman numerals!

Enter the password convert your answer into Roman numerals

Enter password

But you have a long way to go yet… You’ll need a Roman instrument to help you along the way. It’s called the Caesar cypher.

Hover your cursor over it and you’ll find a word underneath. Oh - and you’ll need to find out how the Caesar cypher works!

DOLJX

Enter the password! (do not use capital letters here)

Enter password

Early on in your serious games course, you’ll be creating and conducting a SURVEY of gaming habits. You’ll write your questionnaires in your home universities (if ever you return home …) and they’ll be completed by students from the EDUC alliance. In class, you’ll analyse and present the results of your surveys. A lot of this course involves team-working…

Are you still thirsting for freedom? First, you’ll have to solve this ...

The Roman Legionnaires were excellent team workers. (They had no choice, really.) In Ancient Roman warfare, the testudo formation was commonly used during battles and sieges. What is the 8-letter English word for the testudo formation?

Enter the password.

Enter password

Historically, we were linked by the Roman Empire. To move closer to freedom, just click on the picture of a Gallo-Roman ruin found in Brittany in 2016. (The other pictures are of Roman sites in Cagliari and south of Brno.) You’ll be doing quite a lot of personal research on the internet for your projects, so you might as well start here.

This fantastic discovery was made by archeologists in the village of Langrolay-sur-Rance near Dinan in Brittany.

Now, answer this riddle, and you’ll be closer to freedom and home! Who am I? “I can be watched but I can't see I'm an old style DVD; I was gamified around 1970. I see, in Latin only”

Enter the password! (do not use capital letters here)

Enter password

Yes, you’re a video! I see … Actually you’re not a video at all - you’re a student unwillingly trapped in the role of an apprentice gladiator.

When you get back (if you get back) to your English classes, you’ll be watching a lot of videos this semester, all based on the theme of games and gamification. You’ll watch the videos for information, to better understand this fascinating topic, and, obviously, to expand your vocabulary.

Latin has left its imprint on all our languages, even if English has now become our lingua franca.

QUIZ

question

Which of these words is a Czechism: a loan word in English, derived from the Czech lands?

ROBOT

ASPIRIN

ERSATZ

You’re right! The word “robot” first appeared in Karel Čapek’s 1920 play 'Rossum’s Universal Robots'. The play deals with automatons made of biological material that are put to work in factories, thus saving costs for the factory owners. “Robot” comes from robota, an old Czech word meaning “forced labor”.

But don't worry, there will be no forced labour in your English course this semester ! If you do manage to escape from the Colosseum, you’ll be very free to choose your own direction in English. You’ll be watching videos, reading articles, learning vocabulary, playing and creating games of your own choosing. Freedom! But to go further along your path from enslaved gladiator to free student, from Ancient Rome to modern-day Rennes, Brno or Cagliari, you need to solve just a few more enigmas...

You’ve had a peek at what’s going on in the Colosseum, and you really don’t like what you see in the arena.

To get out, look for the next clue..

The Latin harena, which refers to the enclosed space of combat in the middle of Roman amphitheaters, originally meant something else. Incidentally, harena was also the source of “arena” in Spanish, “rena” in Italian and “arène” in French…

Enter the password! (do not use capital letters here)

Clue: what's inside an hourglass ?

Brilliant! You’re very nearly there. The original meaning of harena was sand; Roman amphitheaters were strewn with sand to soak up the blood. You’d better get out quickly before the blood letting begins. One of your (relatively painless) tasks as a student in this course will be to record your own learning experience. This will count for 50% of your mark for the course, so it’s important that you work regularly, right from day one (after your escape from the Colosseum).

Your next clue. Here is a rebus depicting the name of the document in which you will record your personal journey.

Enter the password! (do not use capital letters here)

You’ve got it! You so deserve to be set free and sent back to study! You will indeed be writing a logbook to chart your personal learning journey for the semester. You’ll be learning how to learn, and you’ll be using and hopefully improving your writing skills in the process.

Which leads us to your next clue. The clue is this photo, taken in the beautiful city of Cagliari. Cagliari has some wonderful examples of a certain sort of informal writing which was popular amongst Romans.

The word you need comes from an Italian word meaning “to scribble”. No paper needed. (It was too expensive for most people).

Enter the password! (do not use capital letters here)

You’re so close now. Can you smell the freedom?? So get ready to swap your gladiator’s helmet for your thinking cap, and listen carefully to the following.

Listening comprehension is one of the major skills you’ll be developing over the next few weeks. You’ll hear the same opening sentence in three different languages.

What is the 5-letter word given to this particular type of popular narrative, shared by many cultures ?

This paragraph is ready to hold stunning creativity, experiences and stories.

enter the password

5 letters

Yes indeed. Once you become students again- and that moment is coming very very soon - you’ll be developing story-telling techniques, which you’ll need for the final part of your course project. The gates of the Colosseum are opening. You’re about to step out, an ex-gladiator, ready to go back through the wormhole to your alma maters.

This task will involve (and be judged on) good teamwork, creativity, interaction, presentation skills … and it will be hardwork and fun. You will be creating what you have just completed, and you will be playing the creations of other students. You’re on the brink of freedom. Two words and you’re out. What are these two words??

enter the password

Enough fun and games. Now for some real work

...or else !!!!