The story
A group of students spent three weeks on an educational game about the immune system. It had a story, twelve levels and a boss fight. At the open day, visitors played it for about forty seconds and walked away. Nobody reached the part where the learning happened.
Meanwhile, a two-minute game in the corner (tap the bacteria off the teeth before the acid wins) had a queue. People played it three times and asked how teeth repair themselves.
What you learn in this lesson
A good educational game is short, teaches one thing, and makes the player want to know more.
That is the kind of game you will make in this course:
- 1 to 3 minutes of play per level
- one fact that the game makes you feel (for example: every snack starts a new acid attack)
- sourced facts and labelled fiction: the player always knows what is real
- a next step: a page or mini-course where the curious player learns more
Do this
- Play three games on games.emolio.com. Pay attention to when you understood the idea of each game.
- Choose your topic. Good first topics have a clear "enemy" or a visible process: a microbe, a parasite, a stone, a clot, a cavity. You can pick one from the games site's categories or think of your own.
- Find three facts about your topic, each from a trustworthy source (a public health institute, a university page, a textbook). Write them down in your own words, with the link.
Tip: ask Claude to help you search, but always open the source yourself and check that it really says what Claude says it does. Sources change, and AI sometimes remembers an old version.
Result of this lesson
- Your topic
- Three facts, in your own words, each with a source link
Keep them: in the next lesson you turn them into the fact table your game is built on.