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
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.

Contributions

  • Developed a matching card game, GoNoGo task, and maze memorization game as part of the games package
  • Implemented a short mini-game at the start of the sequence of games aimed at teaching users with little exposure to tablets how to use a touch screen
  • Designed and developed generic systems to be abstracted across several of the mini-games in order to make the development of the holistic package a more efficient process
  • Developed the "hazard" system for Village Builder, a city-builder game included in the package, that threatens to destroy parts of the player's village in order to promote executive functions like reasoning and planning​
Picture
Memory matching game
Picture
An early version of Village Builder
  • Implemented UI for the objective system in Village Builder in a such a way as to avoid language barriers
  • Worked closely with a team of researchers while in Kampala, Uganda to train them on gameplay procedures
  • Spent a week and a half working in the Mulago hospital in Kampala to rapidly iterate on feedback from pilot testing with some of the local children
  • Collaborated with the team of Ugandan researchers while in Kampala in order to incorporate their cultural knowledge into the design of Village Builder

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
Picture
Myself and the team in Uganda
Created by David Robitaille, 2020