The “Aware Game Awards” present games that go beyond entertainment – they explore personal, social, and global themes, encourage empathy, engagement, and help better understand the world around us. The projects will be judged by an international jury, and the BLON festival will take place in Klaipėda from September 10–13.
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“This is an important recognition for the museum even before the project’s premiere. It shows that museum stories and collections can be relevantly told using modern media, and a game can become not only a form of entertainment but also a tool for learning, critical thinking, and emotional connection with history. It is especially important for us to find ways that allow the museum’s content to be discovered by audiences for whom the digital environment is a natural part of everyday life,” says Rūta Kačkutė, Director General of the Lithuanian National Museum.
The virtual exhibition-game will take you back to the 6th-7th decades of the 19th century, when the Vilnius Antiquities Museum, founded by Count Eustachy Tyszkiewicz, operated in Vilnius – the first public museum in Lithuania and the origin of the current Lithuanian National Museum.
In the three-dimensional environment reconstructed based on historical data, the player will enter the then Franciszek Smuglewicz Hall, be able to move freely within it, explore exhibits, and talk with the museum’s founder Eustachy Tyszkiewicz. The actor Rimantas Bagdzevičius lent his voice to the project.
The virtual museum features 129 digitized exhibits – paintings, sculptures, archaeological finds, coins, and other museum valuables, currently preserved in the Lithuanian National Museum and other institutions in the country. The player decides which objects to explore, what questions to ask, and how deeply to immerse in the museum’s history.
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“The Sanctuary of the Past” tells not only about the Vilnius Antiquities Museum but also about the lost and important historical heritage of Lithuania. Exploring the virtual environment gradually reveals the dramatic fate of the museum during the Russian Empire period – after the 1863–1864 uprising, intensified repression, Russification, and dispersal of the collection. History here is not presented as a continuous narrative – the player discovers it themselves.
The project combines museology and computer game culture: authentic historical sources, museum valuables, and curatorship are combined here with free player interaction with the environment and narrative game principles.
The author of the virtual experience idea and game designer is Povilas Vincentas Jankūnas, programmer – Daumantas Šimkus, exhibition curator – Tadas Šėma, project manager – Jurga Strimaitienė. The project is presented by the Lithuanian National Museum.
The first testers of the virtual exhibition-game were visitors of the Vilnius Book Fair held in February 2026. The “Vilnius Antiquities Museum: Sanctuary of the Past” has not yet been officially presented to the public, so inclusion in the “Aware Game Awards” competition program became the first international recognition of the upcoming project.
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You can learn more about the project here: https://lnm.lt/vilniaus-senienu-muziejus/
