Ontrafel Franeker

The Eise Eisinga Planetarium in Franeker is home to the oldest working planetarium in the world, built into the ceiling of a canal house by amateur astronomer Eise Eisinga in the 18th century. The museum wanted a way to get kids curious about that history before they even walked through the door. The brief was an online escape room, playable at home or at school, that teaches children the story of Eise Eisinga and rewards them with a real incentive: finish within 15 minutes and you get free tickets to the Planetarium and Museum Martena. It had to run in a browser with no install, work on the school and home devices kids actually have, and hold the attention of 6 to 12 year olds for the full runtime.

This was my first project in PlayCanvas, and it ended up opening the door to a lot of what came after, both for me and for the media team at Enversed. My colleague handled the visual design; we worked out the quests, storyline, and overall game concept together, and I built the whole thing in code.

Players pick one of two characters, Sara or Tim, and move through 9 locations around Franeker, from the Planetarium itself to the university, the tunnels, and the town hall, collecting 6 planets along the way. Each planet is gated behind its own small puzzle: a dialogue you need to get through, an NPC chase, a shield-rotation puzzle at the Stadhuis, a key you need to swap for the right one to unlock the tunnels, and a fire you need to light with a torch to see in the dark. All 6 planets get dragged into place on the planetarium ceiling in a final assembly minigame, where each one tweens into its correct size and position and drops a bit of educational text about it.

Dialogue runs on Yarn Spinner scripts, so NPC conversations branch based on what a player has picked up or solved. A hint system nudges kids in the right direction if they get stuck for too long. At the end, the voucher code and the player's details get submitted through a form that sends out the winning email.

A Dutch-language point-and-click escape room built in PlayCanvas, playable directly in the browser. Two playable characters, 9 explorable locations, 6 collectible planets each behind its own puzzle, and a final planet-assembly minigame. Finishing within 15 minutes generates a real voucher code for free tickets to the Eise Eisinga Planetarium and Museum Martena.

The game is still live and in use today. Since it was my first PlayCanvas project, it also became something of a launching point: it's the reason PlayCanvas ended up being used for a long string of projects afterwards, both by me and by the rest of the media team at Enversed.