Game Metadata
Game : Brain Physics Puzzle
Platform : Mobile (Android)
Developer : DreamZ / Newlightgame
Subject Area : Physics
Learning Objectives
The educational goal / learning objective is to understand Physics and implement the understanding of Physics to move the trucks to bring the box to the destination.
The concept is pretty simple - but you may need some prior understanding of what Physics is in order to start playing. A very young boy might have a harder grasp of starting the game.
Game Elements
Noun: The main elements are the truck, the box, coins and the "target area". Other than that, the game also has backgrounds, hanging floors, floors, magnifier and other moving buttons such as arrows, help, reset and exit.
Verb: The two main verbs are drawing lines or polygons as the path for the truck and pushing on the arrows to move the truck.
For the core loop, we are tasked to draw lines or polygons or anything for that matter to provide path for the truck to move. The path should in the end allows the truck to bring the box to the "target area". We could move the truck to the left or to the right by clicking on the arrows. Aside from that, the truck can also collect coins while moving as well.
For the outer loop, there are levels that we have to pass in order to move to the next level. The higher the level, the harder the game gets.
Learning Mechanisms
The game ties to Physics in a way that the drawing that you make will have:
1) A gravitational pull
If the lines are not connected and there's nothing that helps "hang" the line, the line will fall to the bottom of the floor. Similarly, if you draw an unbalanced polygon, your polygon will not stand. You would need to think on how to ensure that the polygons / lines you drew would stay as you want it.
2) The truck's movement
This may be tied to the gravitational pull as well. The truck can only move either to the left or to the right. If the lines are not drawn correctly, the truck may just fell upside down. We need to make sure the path that we drew is a path that would not make the truck fall. For example, a very steep line will most likely make the truck fall.
The game has a few game principles that takes place:
1) Pretraining, Guided Attention & Multimedia
The first level is a very simple process. It teaches how to move the truck. That is it. It acts as a pretraining for subsequent levels. And it also added additional multimedia, for example, a hand pointing towards the right arrow to indicate that the user will need to push the right arrow to move the truck. It also added text as a guided attention in the middle of the screen to say, "Take the box to the destination." to teach
2) Scaffolding
Following the first level is the second level. The second level is also intended to guide the player to start "drawing the path". Similarly to level 1, it also contains pretraining, guided attention and multimedia to help the player to understand why / how the path is drawn. (In level 1, they were only used to show how to move the truck) Nevertheless, at this level, the game no longer shows how to move the truck. It is assuming that since the player has passed level 1, the player should have the knowledge of moving the truck.
Overall Critique
I thought the 3rd level was actually immediately super hard in comparison to the first and second level. I thought that the developer could have an easier 3rd level to ensure that the players have a full grasp of how / what to draw. Even though it was sequenced right, but I think the goldilocks principle was not applied to the third level. Nonetheless, the third level also introduced a new concept, which is "the box is on the ground". There were no prior training on how to pick up the box from the ground.
Having said that, I still like the game. I think it helps in understanding the Physics concept - though since it was immediately hard at level 3, I am unsure if people would just try multiple draws instead of thinking how to solve it using the Physics knowledge.
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