Mecanika submitted to IGF

I'm submitting Mecanika to the IGF contest. I've got no idea if I've got any chances of being selected, since I'm presenting a game which has a larger agenda than just being fun. We'll see how well educational games are received by the industry!

Here's a link to a video trailer I made for this. Make sure to check out the other linked videos.

Meaningful Play 2010 Poster

Going to East Lansing to have people play Mecanika

Poster

Mecanika video

Just uploaded a french video on youtube detailing the basic gameplay.




Edit - just finished the English version.

Introducing: Mecanika

This is the little game I've been working on in the last year as part of my Masters at UQAM. The name is Mecanika, and is a mix between Lemmings and World of Goo. The goal of Mecanika is to collect stars with little rocks by creating a path of impulsions, accelerations and rotations. It will be freely available as a flash game on http://www.gameforscience.ca/. This project is financed by the Inukshuk initiative, which allowed Creo to create a physics Island on their website to host the game. I am myself doing this project for free, and it is surprisingly still easy for me to get motivated by it.

The point of the game is to:
A) Have fun
B) Trigger misconceptions commonly encountered by physics novices
C) Be a fun homework that teachers can then use as a tool to address student's misconceptions

There are enough educational "games" out there that make you answer questions, apply formulas, and otherwise fail to exploit video games learning potential by trying to force a school's curriculum in preexisting game mechanics. Mecanika takes a different approach: it is a game about solving tricky physics puzzles, which hopefully will change how you think about physics, thus laying out the foundations for a proper education in the classroom.

Here are some screenies:

Mecanika will hit the interwebs on Winter 2011. In the meantime I will post my progress here.

Refraction wins Disney Grand Prize!

A game I've been working a bit on with Zoran's team just won the Disney Learning Challenge 2010 contest, against really good games. Congrats!

Refraction

Welcome!

I kept repeating myself in the last months that I lacked a public space to show my work around to people, so here's my first attempt at this. I'm not used to have my voice heard on the tubes. I think this is going to be mostly a list of interesting game design principles I learned both from Bungie and my own work on educational game projects.