Join us in Varsity Hall to play new and exciting games from developers, students, and researchers. Games will be slotted in 30 and 60 minute sessions. Attend one 60 minute demo or two 30 minute demos:
Codemancer
Bobby Lockhart, Important Little Games
Try out the award-winning learning game "Codemancer, Chapter 1: Once Upon a Hexagon"
Bulge Lab
Michael DeAnda
Bulge Lab is an online Alternate Reality Game in which the player explores the intersections of masculinity, body image, and viruses through an online adventure across several web platforms. This project was developed from a survey conducted on the playing habits and body image of men who have sex with men.
Multiplayer Classroom
Aaron Pavao
A show-and-tell by a teacher who turned his classes into games eight years ago and has been iterating ever since. Topics include what works, what doesn't, what's surprising, the effects on students and parents, and a little bit of why. Questions encouraged.
Word Flood: Understanding word game user experience
Isaac Sung, Matthew Berland; UW Madison
There will be a playable demo of a word finding game (similar to Boggle) that contains various design features satisfying different usability principles for video games.
Timeless Tales 2.0: NexLevel (Istation Reading)
Natalie F. Masters, Don Massey; Istation (Dallas, TX)
Timeless Tales 2.0: NexLevel is the next generation in game-based reading instruction for adolescents. Designed to maximize student agency and provide authentic learning experiences, TT 2.0 offers branching narratives, relatable characters and environments, an adaptive arcade, and an engaging overall game narrative, all deeply rooted in and aligned to the standards.
TOAST - AstroBotany for Boys and Girls
Richard Barker, Simon Gilroy; UW Madison Botany
Mike Beall, Gear Learning
Scott Kelly spent nearly a year on the international space station and became the worlds first space farmer. TOAST is astrobotany genetics analysis tool developed in the UW Botany department as part of the NASA GeneLab project. As part of the democratization of science we are exploring how these data are received and interrupted by students from a range of different backgrounds and ages. These tests are informing the development of new educational strategies aimed at training the next generation of space farmers.
RoboEngineers
James LaPierre, Joe Horan, Jon Kieffer, Luke Jayapalan, Lynden Fenske, Josh Bartels; Filament Games
RoboEngineers is an immersive sandbox world where players design, build, and test robots to serve the needs of squishy, hapless humans in the world of tomorrow. Assemble robots piece by piece, rigging each creation with motors, gears, and customizable wireless controls in order to conquer tricky, open-ended challenges where the solutions as varied as your engineering ingenuity. Inspired by the rising popularity of makerspace programs and robotics organizations, RoboEngineers aims to ignite player interest in STEM fields by offering players the tools to unleash their problem solving skills and creative potential.
Hurricanes, Waves, and Wetlands: Analog Games for the Physical Science Classroom
Christopher Russell, Ian Hartman, Whitney Pow, Philip Ehrenberg; Northwestern University
Join Arribot Game Design as we play three educational board games! In Destructive Interference, students learn the physics of waves by competing in “wave battles”; in Project Stormfury, players predict the movement patterns of an incoming hurricane as they work to prepare a coastline for disaster; and in Race to Restore, students rehabilitate a damaged, randomly-generated marshland. In partnership with JASON Learning, Arribot makes accessible games that inspire teamwork and problem-solving for 6th grade through 12th grade students in conjunction with existing STEM curricula. Visit Arribot Game Design’s website at ArriGames.com.
Debugging Music – Audio Puzzle Games to Foster Social Computational Thinking
Vishesh Kumar, UW Madison
Although educators, researchers, and designers have increasingly advocated for developing computational thinking (CT) in young children, the vast majority of CT learning environments fail to support the development of positive attitudes towards problem solving, confidence in dealing with complexity, and communicating and working with others to achieve a goal. To address this issue, our design team developed a music-based puzzle game called SynthSync. The game challenges players to work collaboratively to “debug” jumbled musical compositions through close listening, tinkering, and communication. SynthSync players manipulate controls to adjust musical variables (pitch, note length, and the length of rests) in arhythmic and dissonant musical puzzles based on popular songs until they “discover” the original piece of music.
Creating the art style for a game about safe medication practices
Gear Learning art interns
Designing and developing a tower defense game based on the human immune system
Gear Learning CS interns
New, Innovative Games
UW Student Game Design Club