Training adolescents in first aid is of crucial importance, given that this age group can often encounter emergency situations where rapid and effective responses are essential to save lives. However, one of the biggest challenges faced by educators is finding methodologies that make first aid teaching not only effective but also engaging for students. Game-based learning emerges as an innovative and promising approach, as it combines elements of interactivity and engagement, potentially improving both assimilation and retention of content. This pedagogical technique uses game mechanics to make the educational process more dynamic and attractive, encouraging students to actively participate in learning and to develop practical and theoretical skills in an integrated and meaningful way. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of two types of educational games, "game show" and "escape game", compared to a control group, in promoting learning and retention of content among high school students in a private school. This experimental study used randomization to distribute 117 high school students into three groups: control (n=40), game show (n=36), and escape game (n=41). Initially, all participants took a pre-test to assess their prior knowledge of first aid. They then participated in a 120-minute theoretical and practical training. After the training, the intervention groups participated in their respective activities: the game show group and the escape game group engaged in their specific game strategies. A post-test was applied immediately after the interventions of each group and repeated six months later to assess knowledge retention. Initially, a descriptive analysis of the data was performed to understand the distribution and basic characteristics of each group. To evaluate the best strategy, repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) and regression models were used. Regarding the profile of the participants, 59% were male, with a mean age of 15.8 years (SD 0.993), and with a similar distribution between grades. The mean number of correct answers was 4.75 (1.52) in the pre-test, 7.06 (1.49) in the immediate post-test and 5.79 (1.62) in the 6-month post-test. The mean number of correct answers in both post-tests was higher in the gameshow group. The mean number of correct answers was lower in the escape game group, both in the immediate and 6-month post-tests. The questions with the highest correct answers in the immediate post-test were related to what to do in case of choking (99.1%), procedures for dealing with burns (94.9%) and the main signs of acute myocardial infarction (83.3%). The questions with the lowest correct answers were related to the signs of stroke (56.4%) and the sequence of care for a victim in cardiorespiratory arrest (49.6%). The findings of this study suggest that some game-based teaching strategies can improve learning in content retention over time. The escape game, in particular, did not demonstrate superiority in any of the post-tests. This study supports the use of educational games as effective tools to encourage active learning and improve knowledge retention in high school students. However, further studies using other types of games are recommended. Future research should explore the customization of these games for different learning profiles and their application in different educational contexts.

Keywords: Games, health education, first aid, high school.