Each room opens only with the right phrase for the moment, and only if you match the register, formal or casual.
It is a travel escape-room set in real-world Italian situations. Each room presents a scenario, and to unlock it you must deploy a phrase that is correct in meaning and correct in register, formal or informal. Choose a phrase that means the right thing but uses the wrong register for the situation and you trip the awkwardness alarm. Read the room, then pick the phrase that fits.
Phrasebook Heist teaches Italian phrases and register through a travel escape, covering polite and casual speech.
Deploying a phrase that is correct in meaning and correct in register is politeness as grammar — the T–V distinction and its relatives, where the same content carries different formality.
Making register a fail condition is the original strictness.
Getting it wrong is a real error rather than a nuance. Italian, like most European languages, marks formality in the verb and pronoun, so addressing a stranger with the familiar form is not merely casual — it is a different sentence, and one a phrasebook that only gives meanings will not warn you about.
Phrasebook Heist is an original, free browser game that teaches Italian phrases and register through a travel escape-room. It is built in-house and runs instantly online.