Super Microbe World

I was the Serious Games expert, programmer, and game designer on this project.

I managed two artists and worked closely with subject experts, school teachers and pupils to design this platform game.

Because our target users were pupils and teachers in schools (in the late 2000s / early 2010s) we could not use the most up-to-date technologies (e.g. Unity). I taught myself ActionScript CS2 and wrote a physics engine, an animation director, I8 support via imported text files, and all other technologies not offered by out-the-box Flash.

The big innovation in this game was an inversion of the Serious Games research that was popular at the time. Prominent academics had written extensively about the kinds of learning that happen naturally in games. This learning is embodied in the rules of the game, not necessarily the on-screen text.

Thus, I designed a game that inverted such research. I spent most of my time visting schools, working with teachers and pupils and iteratively crafting experiences that could help in classrooms.

I created a series of game mechanics and dynamics using the principles of Constructive Alignment to teach young people a required set of Learning Outcomes. At its time, e-Bug was one of the largest Serious Games projects and its findings are still cited heavily to date.