The game asks for gender and age, in order to track learning effectiveness. No personal identifying information is tracked or kept. Game usage is logged via anonymous IDs in order to improve the game's educational effectiveness.
High Level Summary: This game is designed to teach children ages 4-11 how to build and identify stable structures. In the game, players must build towers by manipulating a series of blocks in order to help a friendly alien creature get to its spaceship so it can return to home.
Detailed Summary: The game teaches these three basic principles:
Each level is designed to teach one or more of these principles in a progressive manner of increasing challenge to meet the demands of amateur and novice builders alike.
The course was built by the Human Computer Interaction Institute and the Entertainment Technology Center of Carnegie Mellon University with a focus of achieving the learning outcomes listed above.
Playtest data suggests children find the game highly addictive–all of the children in our last playtest wanted to play more; 3 children actually succeeded in finishing all 50 levels within a set time frame.