Integrating the time travel mechanic in VR serious games to enhance causal reasoning

Serious games (SGs) have demonstrated effectiveness in improving individuals' knowledge, skills, and attitudes through training. In particular, many studies showed how the combination of SGs and Virtual Reality (VR) can further improve learning and training methods in the context of practical learning. Based on this consideration, during the design phase, choosing the appropriate game mechanics could have a significant impact on the learning outcome of the experience. A game mechanic that appears to have great potential for learning is the time travel one. By means of repeated time travels this mechanic allows the learner to empirically investigate the causal relationships between choices or actions and their consequences, thus stimulating causal reasoning, rather than proceeding linearly in the narrative. This type of mechanic could be particularly useful in the context of risk management, where each action performed by the user is critical and consequences could compromise the whole experience. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of an immersive VR SG that incorporates a time travel mechanic to enhance causal reasoning, using a hydrogeological risk-management scenario as a case study. The evaluation of the devised SG was conducted through a user study leveraging both subjective and objective evaluations.