Ian Baker Final Project Doc GAM 380 Electrical Circuits Puzzle Game This is a Serious Game Design

concept based around completing and creating electrical circuits. The goal of the game is to teach the user about electricity and how it flows through circuits. The game will do this in a fun and playful manner that accurately represents how electricity flows in a circuit. Much like writing one out on paper where there is a specific symbol for batteries switches and wires, the game will have you create a circuit be placing these pieces on a grid. You can make one to fulfill a particular purpose of have one that needs to be modifying for a purpose. All the components already exist; its a matter of gamifying them and making it a fun experience. The target audience would be people interested in the topic, and high school physics teachers. Hopefully it can become a tool for teaching high school students how electricity flows. While the purpose is mostly academic, the mechanics in place can be purely used as a puzzle game. With the right art style and components this could also be marketed as a general game rather than just serious. Overall physics is a hard subject to grasp. These particularly components, electrical circuits, can be even harder to grasp if you cant look at it abstractly. Hopefully this game will make the topic easier to grasp as well as more appealing to the high school students who are being taught it. Maybe it will even become common place for it. Either way there is a clear market and need for something to facilitate students.

Mechanics! Time Management: A majority of the puzzles youre faced with will have a time limit. The player must complete the circuit in a set amount of time and with the resources at their disposal. This urges the player to race against the clock and is a scoring system. Finishing a level faster than your previous time would be motivation for reparability. Time limits are a great way of managing a game as well. Say the levels generally have a 2-3 minute time limit, there more likely to play that than a puzzle that they could potentially be stuck on for hours. It gives the player a frame of reference for what they want to do in the game. Resource Management: With resource management it enables the designer to create a number of different scenarios for the player. The player can be given unlimited suppliers with multiple ways to complete a puzzle. This leaves some ways more impressive than the others. One player could finish a level with 30 pieces where a more experienced player might do it in 10-15. You could also use a rating system in this type of play like gold silver and bronze depending on the number of pieces. The player then has an incentive to replay levels. On the other hand you can limit the number of pieces available and have one right outcome and rely on the time again. Either way how the resources that the player is given are managed will have a direct effect on the players outcome. Most of this type of play would involve the time management section above. The final way would be to give the player a completed circuit thats broken in some way. Its up to the player now to fix it, or make it more optimum. You could give the player a set number of pieces

to choose from or you can give them the entire kit and see how they fix it. But regardless the player will have to understand how all the pieces function as well as mange the other resources thrown at them. Unlockables and Difficulty: The player would start the game with only a few base pieces, but as you get to more complex puzzles some pieces can be combined to make others. Or a simple circuit you made earlier in the game may become a piece in and of itself. There are enough theorems and algorithms in this realm of physics to provide a substantial number of Unlockables. As you progress there is a clear difficulty curve that could attract and incentivize the player. The early stages will be extremely simple to outline the concepts, while the later ones will be fairly hard. And like mention in the Resource Management section a tier system for each level will be applied. So someone may have completed the game, but have they gotten a gold ranking on each level? Its these incentives that will add replay value as well as continue to push the user towards more advanced techniques.

Map Outline The information available on the screen will be Timer Grid/Play space Pieces available and how many of each Currently Selected piece Information on what currently selected piece does The statistics on the gird in play i.e. Frequency, Current, Voltage

Helpful Sources! cool slide show: http://www.slideshare.net/Sciencetutors/building-electrical-circuits Tool to make circuits: http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/elect/index.htm Similar game: http://www.echalk.co.uk/Science/physics/circuitBuilder/circuitBuilder.html Text books: http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/

Narrative: AS the game starts the player is presented with three game modes. Time Attack, FIx-it Mode, and Free play. Each of these modes have different play styles that allow the player to experience the existing mechanics in different ways. Narrative - Time Attack: If the player were to chose Time Attack, they would be presented with race against time play style. In this mode there are levels as you complete each one you unlock the next. So the player enters the level of their choice and are presented with objectives. These objectives consist of the players time limit on this particular level, the pieces they are offered and a design brief on the type of circuit they are to build. If the player fails to make a working circuit before the time is up they lose. If they complete a circuit it is graded accordingly. the grades reflect things like time remaining, as well as pieces reaming and how many were used. The grade will reflected in light bulbs. A burnt out light bulb means you have not beaten the level. If you have completed it, it will be dimly light ofr the lowest award, slightly brighter for the middle award and extremely bright for the highest award. These there luminosities will be easily distinguishable. The player can chose to revisit any level to try and achieve a better score there will be roughly 50 levels all with varying challenges. This mode is also the only way to unlock new pieces. Certain levels introduce new pieces and after you've used them once they are available in all modes. Narrative - Fix-It Mode: In this mode the player is presented with a list of levels as well. With the completion of each level a new level is unlocked. Your progression may be halted in this mode depending on whether or not you have unlocked certain pieces in Time attack mode.

When the player has chosen a level they are presented with a circuit that is in complete or broken. It is there job to complete it or rearrange it to fit the appropriate design. This mode is not timed and there is always only one correct answer, once its beaten you move on to another one. As you progress through levels in this mode they will become increasingly more difficult. There will roughly be 100 levels/puzzles in this mode. Narrative - Free Play When the player enters this mode it is exactly as it sounds. The players are presented with a blank design grind and an infinite supply of any of the pieces they have unlocked. In this mode they will be allowed to build and experiment with the physics behind circuits as they see fit. There are no unlockables in this mode nor are there any restrictions. The player may use their own discretion to do whatever they would like. Technology and Platform: Ideally this game would be created on a touch screen device so the player would be able to drag and drop and manipulate their circuits with their fingers. This ease of access and simply controls will be one of the appealing point of this game. In collaboration with the touch screen the most likely platforms will be Smartphone's and mobile devices. Not only does this allow use multiple platforms that the game can be easily replicated for but it also makes it easy for teachers to use the app with students. Instead of students buying a book or a disc they can simply download the game from the app store. Being on mobile devices also gives us the option to update the game with new levels easily through the 3g & 4g services attached to most Smartphone's.