Project Outline

Why Make an Educational Videogame?:

Videogames are often an overlooked educational medium. No movie or book can give the consumer the same level of interaction and control over a narrative and thus their learning. This control leads to a higher level of engagement from the player because the more they play, the more they shape their story within the game. We hope that this desire to complete a narrative (and overcome challenges) will overshadow the player’s possible complete disinterest in learning.

Initial Ideas:

Ideally this game would be based in the 4x games genre; a type of strategy game that requires the player to grow their empire through exploration, expansion, exploitation and extermination (hence 4x). However, these tend to be very complex games and is therefore not a reasonable goal given the extremely limited time-frame that we are faced with and the lack of game development experience of most of the team. Thus we have made the decision to compromise on many features with a goal of providing proof of concept that a game that incorporates learning about physical principles can be made enjoyable.

Game Outline:

At present our objective is to create the most skeletal form of a civilisation game set in space using unity. Consisting of a static hex-tile map including various planet types (populated/unpopulated) and other celestial objects (e.g. black holes, asteroid belts, stars) which present different challenges for the player that relate to physical concepts and provide avenues through which we can educate and thus prove the concept we have been tasked with.

The focus is mainly on the exploration aspect of the game to give the player the ability to have some control over the narrative and therefore engage as much as possible. To adequately demonstrate most of the game mechanics, such as movement of different unit types (ships), resource gathering, progression through the tech tree and the actual answering of questions that relate to their current situation as they travel through space upgrading their civilisation we feel that only a section of static map should be created associated with a relatively small section of the tech tree. This would then act as the foundation to allow further development.

We’re scrapping any form of democracy (and for our initial version most interaction from enemies), multiple resources and large scale unit diversity to instead focus on how to use the pacing of these games to make players interact with education. One of the main focuses is the technology tree, where we can talk about real technological improvements (both that have occurred so far and ones that humans will eventually achieve) and provide more in depth background to physical processes going on in the discoveries. We also plan to create encounters where players are presented physics questions which they are rewarded for if they answer successfully. While the hex-tile board prevents us from accurately representing physical phenomena, the player will still see a reflection of their actions in gameplay mechanics (e.g. new fuel source -> better movement, discovery of better material -> higher hp).