An interactive narrative to improve cultural heritage experience in elementary school children

Cultural Heritage can use ICT and game design to provide compelling experiences of visiting ancient ruins. In fact, archaeological sites benefit from being enriched with additional meanings that help visitors to contextualize what they see. For example, young tourists, when accessing cities of the past, could miss the chance of really appreciating the history and the culture of extinguished civilizations. We propose an interactive story for them through which they can explore an archaeological site. We carefully planned the structure of this game according to four main dimensions: magic circle, narrative, immersion, and agency. Afterward, the prototype was presented as a scenario to five tourist guides, who positively evaluated the game and also gave us some valuable feedback.