Grand Art Game — Hermitage Amsterdam

The Hermitage Amsterdam, a branch of Hermitage St. Petersburg, decided to launch an initiative with the aim of interesting a younger demographic for its exhibitions. As part of this initiative, the museum partnered with Total Design to develop the Grand Art Game.

I worked on the game’s UI/UX, and was responsible for the character animations as well as a feature rewarding players with free entrance to the museum.

At the International Design Awards 2021, the game won silver in the category Multimedia / Mobile / Web Application Design and bronze in Multimedia / Interactive Media.

A playful way to engage with art

The Grand Art Game functions both as a stand-alone game, allowing visitors to take home the museum experience, and as an on-site game, playfully augmenting Hermitage Amsterdam’s exhibitions.

In stand-alone mode, the player chooses a Russian tsar as avatar, and then levels up their tsar by completing quizzes about a range of artworks. The quizzes cover different periods of art and increase in difficulty. With each successfully completed quiz, the player can chose one new artwork to be added to their collection. A leaderboard allows players to compete with other players. Hermitage Amsterdam maintains the quiz library completely independent via a custom Strapi backend.

Catch them all

The on-site mode works as treasure hunt to be played during the exhibition experience. QR codes inviting visitors to play the game are strategically placed on entry tickets and in the museum environment. After scanning, players choose between two difficulty levels, and then select a treasure hunt of their choice.

To complete the hunt, players have to find small QR codes placed next to selected artworks in the museum, scan them and complete a 4-question quiz. Once done, the artwork is marked as found and added to the players collection. After visiting the museum, players can continue to stand-alone mode with a head start, as the artworks found in the live version remain in their collection.

From player to visitor

An important aspect was motivating players to become museum visitors. To incentivise this, a pop-up notifies players of a reward waiting for them: a free ticket for Hermitage Amsterdam. After collecting 10 artworks, the ticket is added to their collection, and can be shown upon visit at the museum entrance.