Brain Powered Games - Africa
Role(s): Programmer, Technical Designer
Genre: Educational collection of mini-games
Platform: Mobile (iPad)
Development Time: 11 months, launched March 2020
Team Size: 8
Engine: Unity
Awards/Accolades: Currently in-use through MSU research in Africa
Genre: Educational collection of mini-games
Platform: Mobile (iPad)
Development Time: 11 months, launched March 2020
Team Size: 8
Engine: Unity
Awards/Accolades: Currently in-use through MSU research in Africa
Brain Powered Games - Africa is a package of "brain training" mini-games that is used in a psychological research study through Michigan State University. The study aims to use the games to improve the cognitive abilities of children in Africa who have suffered brain damage as a result of HIV or malaria. The games are being developed by the Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab at MSU.
All of the mini-games were originally created around 10 years ago by the GEL Lab. I was brought onto the team in order to recreate those games from the ground up to be ported to the iOS platform. Our team was also tasked with creating a new game entirely to be added to the collection upon completion. Called Village Builder, it is a city-builder, real time strategy game aimed at challenging more of the higher-order, executive functions of the children such as reasoning, decision making, and planning. I have been on the project since its inception in May 2019. In September 2019, I had the opportunity to travel to Uganda to pilot test the games in the research environment. A full description of my contributions can be found below. |
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Contributions
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Takeaways
- Porting an existing codebase into a new, "remastered" version
- Communicating effectively with a very diverse team
- Developing an experience for a client
- Designing object-oriented systems that speed up development time
- Designing gameplay systems with a target audience in mind