Project «Three Men in the Mountains besides Alice»

The project «Three Men in the Mountains besides Alice» is implemented by the Tomsk Regional Art Museum together with the TSU Research Library under the sponsorship of the Vladimir Potanin Foundation. The result of our team’s work is an immersive, not strictly historical journey-game for 1-4 players who interact with the voice assistant Alice and also use the board game. Players set off on a journey from Tomsk to the Altai, experience various meetings and adventures, discover something new not only about the history of these places, but also about themselves. Learn more about the game and start it at the Alice’s skill webpage.

This gamified story is based on the collections of the Tomsk Regional Art Museum and the TSU Research Library: the memoirs of Professor Vasilii Sapozhnikov and his book Pathways across the Russian Altai (1912) illustrated with the paintings by Grigory Gurkin, the first professional Altai artist, and the Sapozhnikov’s own expedition photos. The course of the game depends on players’ choices that lead to different game endings. Game content is supplemented with references, links and audio materials on the topic.

The value of the project «Three Men in the Mountains besides Alice» is that it is not just includes game elements but is gamified in its essence. It is not a gamified lecture, but a real game with the sense of immersion and authenticity: there are no right decisions; all of them lead to a result that may be interesting independently but may as well motivate to take a different path. Choice in this case is not the assessment of knowledge but a twist in the plot that players create themselves based on the variants offered by the scriptwriters. It is only up to a player to decide what variant of the game and its ending are correct. Another valuable feature of the game is its replayability.

The project is implemented by the winner of the «Museum 4.0» contest (round 6) sponsored by the Museums Without Borders charity program of the Vladimir Potanin Foundation.