First time of the Leonardo da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan a Milan Games Week 2022and to celebrate the debut, the Museum is launching a escape room online space themed. It will be called M4RT3! and, as the name suggests, will be dedicated to Mars and astronomy, created in collaboration with INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera and with visual design and development by Marimento.
M4RT3! presents itself as a narrative journey between science and science fiction, on the trail of the famous astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli, to discover the mysteries of the Red Planet.
In an official press release the Museum described M4RT3! like “one escape room online narrative and investigative, on the border between fiction, historical reality and current events, in which the player will be able to discover the true story of Schiaparelli, Director of the Brera Astronomical Observatory in Milan, when, on the night of August 23, 1877, pointing the telescope towards Mars with which he was observing the sky, he discovered continents, seas, islands, canals, polar caps and came to fantasize about the existence of intelligent beings, the Martians”.
Prices, duration and information on the escape room at Milan Games Week 2022
M4RT3! it is open online to groups of 1 to 6 players aged 12 or over. The experience has a maximum duration of 90 minutes and will be available for all three days of the fair (from 25 to 27 November). The access ticket to the experience is €10, which can be purchased in presale here starting from Wednesday 23 November or in the card version in the MUST shop bookshop or at the Museum stand at Milan Games Week. An internet-connected PC or tablet is required to participate.
The plot follows the story of Margherita Hacker, a famous astrophysicist and enthusiast of ancient instruments, while she is at work restoring the Merz-Repsold telescope – an instrument with which Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli, Director of the Brera Astronomical Observatory in Milan until 1900, observed and represented the geography of the planet Mars as never before – find a note signed by Schiaparelli himself, dated 1890.
The message is partially illegible, but the rest of the text sounds like a warning to humanity for future explorations of Mars. At that point the famous astrophysicist wonders what shocking discovery Schiaparelli made by observing Mars in the sky and what is the real content of that warning and what we earthlings should beware of today. Margherita Hacker knows how much Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli was a meticulous and prudent researcher and therefore a message he left to posterity must be taken with absolute seriousness. That evening, the researcher senses that her life is about to change forever and that all her energies will be directed towards solving that mystery to save planet Earth and its inhabitants.