MedievalMe is a digital multiplayer escape room for secondary school students that combines cultural heritage and science. In teams, students solve puzzles on their smartphones, working together across disciplines and sharpening their critical thinking. This all within a single lesson and with minimal teacher preperation. Smartphones turn from distraction into a powerful tool for learning and discovery.
With MedievalMe, we bring cultural heritage to life for today's students. No boring museum visits, but an intuitive game where they can explore, experiment, and discover in their own way and in their own language. We build on the energy and dynamics that are already present in the classroom. A medieval manuscript becomes a tangible 3D object inside a serious game. Students are free to laugh, joke, and collaborate. Heritage is no longer a dusty memory of the past, but something they can use to shape their own identity.
The game offers a solution for an education system that's stuck. Outdated materials and a lack of time make way for an intuitive game that activates students and relieves teachers. As one teacher put it beautifully: “The game plants a seed, and I finally have time to water it.” This way, heritage reaches even those students who might never set foot in a museum.
Students wanted to play on their smartphones, teachers were sceptical. MedievalMe found the middle ground: a web-based game that works on any device. From an old Samsung to the latest iPhone, from tablet to laptop.
The device is no longer a distraction, but a piece of the puzzle. Each player holds part of the solution and must collaborate to uncover the mystery. This way, screen time turns into real interaction connecting students with each other and with cultural heritage. And of course, it's fully privacy-proof: we don't store or track any user data.
For teachers the setup takes seconds. The app forms the teams automatically, explains itself, and keeps the entire class engaged through the digiboard. The classroom dynamics, team progress, scores, and collaboration are visible at a glance.
MedievalMe breaks down classroom silos and sparks interdisciplinary collaboration. Students choose their own superpower and work together to solve mysteries. Through play, they develop cross-curricular skills almost without noticing.
The game is accessible to all levels, from vocational to pre-university education. We've proven that when the content is engaging, every student participates, even with complex texts. Science isn't elitist. It's something everyone can contribute to.
We started with design sprints and invited students to the Royal Library. We printed medieval imagery and let them play with it. Touching, remixing, and imagining their own stories. Some were shocked or surprised, others just curious. But then they became seriously interested: “But wait... What is really happening here?” That's when we knew we had something.
This collaborative approach became the backbone of inventing, designing, and developing the game. We constantly validated and refined every part of it, deliberately keeping the technology flexible and adaptable. We also worked closely with history teachers to understand how the game could be as easy as possible for them to setup and how it could fit naturally into their existing ways of working.
We started very small: on paper, cutting and pasting. Then came low-fidelity technical prototypes, and eventuelly giving it it's rich, distinct, vibrant medieval style.
MedievalMe makes cultural heritage engaging, breaks through educational barriers, and turns the so-called “hated” smartphone into a tool for real-world interaction and collaboration. The game shows what the future of learning can look like: innovative, inclusive, and meaningful by bringing the past to life.
The concept was reviewed and funded by the prestigious Dutch Research Council (NWO), enabling its realisation. In addition, MedievalMe was included in the strategic annual plan of the Royal Library of the Netherlands (KB).
During development, we launched part of the concept early: the Medieval Meme Generator. This interactive feature gives young people a creative way to explore cultural heritage and make it their own and it has already been used more than 100,000 times. In the first month after launch, over 1,000 games were started and more than 5,000 students played MedievalMe.
The game aligns with the growing trend of digitising cultural heritage. What makes it unique is that we go beyond digitisation: we make this digital heritage truly meaningful in education. Also with this product we've given our take on the discssion about smartphones in the classroom.
With features on Dutch Radio 1 & 2 (NPO), a full spread in AD weekend edition (the largest newspaper in the Netherlands) as well as podcasts and interviews in professional journals. MedievalMe also won a prestigious Dutch Interactive Award (DIA), won 2 European Lovie Awards, and received the People's Choice Award at the OMG Conference in Kortrijk, Belgium. We've since shared our insights at various conferences and industry events.
Let's invent and create an engaging digital experience, together.