Bringing Empty Rooms to Life for Casual Visitors Using an AR Adventure Game

Abstract

This article reports on a heritage engagement project called Skullduggery at Old Government House. It offers an approach to augmented reality design based on adventure games as a solution to the problem of “empty rooms” encountered by casual visitors to cultural heritage sites such as historic buildings. Many cultural heritage sites depend on didactic panels and perhaps a few tangible items to communicate the history of a heritage location to casual visitors, however, providing a sense of the “spirit” of a site is harder to present to visitors who may only be passing through. The project is a response to this problem in Old Government House, Brisbane. It is inspired by a theatrical tour of the house and the potential of narrative games to re-create the tour's experiential aspects and engagement with a sense of history and place for casual visitors.