Look Up, Look Down, Look Around

Game Design by: Ashley Torosian

Research done by: Louise Bean

This bitsy game was designed as an interactive component for an educational project called Blaze. Blaze is a multimedia project aimed at teaching people the importance and impact of wildfires and reshaping how people view them. This game aims to teach people what to look for in different environments to determine how fire would behave. This bitsy game was designed to be a part of the virtual exhibit and to also be included as a hand on portion of a lecture to elementary school students. For more information check out the Blaze virtual exhibit here: Blaze Virtual Exhibit.

This bitsy game uses a sprite nicknamed Blaze who is a park ranger to introduce players to the game and guide them to the start. This sprite was set up as a variable so that it can use the advanced dialogue sequence option. The first time that you interact with the sprite it tells you what the game is about and then invites you to explore the park. If the player chooses to interact with the sprite a second time, the sprite will give them a nudge in the direction of the park to start the game. This is to help guide new players in the right direction in case they are unsure of what to do.

In this bitsy game players play as the wildfire. The goal of this is to help transform players into the ‘mindset’ of a fire. By controlling the fire and seeing how it reacts with the environment around it, they are mimicking the actions fire would take in the real world. As players move throughout the park they interact with other sprites and items that utilize dialogue to teach them about how that component impacts fire behavior. The use of sprites vs items play a key role in helping to reinforce the information being given to the players. Since items disappear when interacted with, they are used when the icon they represent are either temporary factors in an environment, like the temperature or wind, or when the icon burns easily. For example, the twig and the grass are both things that burn quickly and are therefore items that disappear when interacted with to mimic being burned. Sprites are used when the items don’t burn as easily, like the live bush. In the case of the tree stump and hill, tiles were used as walls to help show that it takes more effort for the fire to go around those things. The three park rooms are all designed to help teach the players what to look for when looking up, down, and around, to determine how a fire would behave in an environment.