ichack20

Labyrinth educational game: Our group in general are greatly motivated to help others in all of our actions, and thus, when NextJump proposed their challenge, it was a natural choice to create a product which would comply with their standards. As students who have come from diverse backgrounds, every member in our group understood the difficulties of learning a new language at a young age. Hence, we wished to create a platform to allow children to have the opportunity to learn a new language while also enjoying their time. This led to the development of our idea for our project - an educational game.

It incorporates basic vocabulary of a foreign language, like the words of family members and pets, with the fun aspects of a usual game. The concept of the game is simple: in order to escape from the labyrinth, one must retrieve all the keys, and each key is accompanied with a certain challenge which would test the player's knowledge of the vocabulary. There are also multiple levels so that various vocabulary terms are tested. The challenges can either be a word search, a mini-hangman game, or writing down the translation of a word. All of these challenges are designed to help the user learn new words and improve their basic vocabulary in a foreign language. The game and graphics have also been rendered so that it is greatly accessible for all children who are able to read.

The game consists of four main components - the three challenges and the graphical user interface to link the challenges together, the labyrinth design. The challenges were split so that one person worked on each challenge, and the remaining members worked on the labyrinth design and the integration of all the separate components.

Whilst developing the game, we faced difficulties since, although the language used was familiar to all members, namely Java, none of us had experience in game development using the language. However, through great teamwork and effective communication between members, these obstacles were overcome. Overall, the whole experience was memorable and enjoyable.