Stranded in Pompeii: A Burnout Experience
Project
Working within a group, we designed and developed Survive the Burn, a narrative-driven learning game that explores burnout, decision-making, and personal limits through an immersive survival scenario. Learners take on the role of a shipwreck survivor navigating five days on an island, managing limited Energy Points (EP) while making choices about work, rest, and helping others. Through branching scenarios and consequence-based feedback, the experience encourages reflection on prioritization, boundary-setting, and the impact of overextending oneself in high-pressure environments.
Learning Goals:
Build awareness of burnout as a systemic pattern, not a personal failure;
Practice skills that prevent burnout like prioritization, boundary-setting, recognizing depletion and asking for help before, during and even when it becomes crisis.
Technologies:
Twine, Adobe Firefly, ChatGPT, Claude, Adobe Photoshop
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Design Approach
Energy bar reflecting burnout stages
The experience integrates the five stages of burnout into a visual energy bar, allowing learners to track their progression over time. This reinforces awareness by showing, through multiple cues, how their decisions gradually move them closer to burnout.
Emotion-driven decision pressure
Uses narrative and emotional context to place learners in realistic situations where they feel compelled toward certain choices, mirroring how burnout develops under pressure.
Reflective decision-making
Encourages users to make realistic choices and reflect on their impact, rather than focusing on right or wrong answers.
Character design reflecting burnout
The character’s visual cues, posture, expression, and energy evolve to reflect increasing exhaustion, helping learners recognize the emotional and physical signs of burnout.