Witness, a cooperative crime-solving mystery board game, is on our minds.
In Witness, each player knows different facts about the case. Gameplay revolves around whispering clues to each other in an effort to piece everything together.
It’s so clearly applicable to communications training and working in cross-functional teams that Witness doesn’t just provide lessons – it might actually be useful as a game played during training.
Super Mario Maker, a game for the Wii U, could probably support entire books about the approaches and design choices it reflects.
It’s a complex level creator for classic side-scrolling Mario games. Anybody can use 72 different pieces in infinite combinations to build the Mario level of their dreams (or nightmares).
Imagine being dumped into that playground with no structure or rules. Without guidance and constraints, figuring out how to design fun and challenging levels could easily be overwhelming. Thankfully, Nintendo caught this problem ahead of time.
In this episode we specifically examine the game’s onboarding process. The way Super Mario Maker teaches players how to play has implications for getting someone up to speed in other games and elsewhere.
If you liked this episode, please leave us a review on iTunes or your podcast app of choice. And if you’ve seen any other interesting ways games handle onboarding, let us know!
Episode 04: Cooperative Learning Principles in Pandemic Legacy
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Brandon introduces Pandemic Legacy and its applications of cooperative learning principles in this week’s shorter “lockpick” episode.
Pandemic Legacy is a collaborative board game that takes a serialized approach to gameplay. Players work together to stop the spread of diseases around the world, and consequences of decisions made during one game carry forward to the next time.
Pandemic and Pandemic Legacy are available wherever finer board games are sold.
Episode 03: Experiential Learning and Text-Based Training in Mr Robot: Exfiltration
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In a smaller “lockpick” episode, we take a look at the new awkwardly named game Mr. Robot: 1.51exfiltrati0n. The game (available for iOS and Android) pretends to be a messaging app like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.
Set in the world of the TV show Mr. Robot, you take on the role of a hacker specializing in social engineering. It’s a choose your own adventure style experience where you decide whether and how to blackmail and coerce your way into systems.
Mr. Robot: 1.51exfiltrati0n serves as an interesting exploration into how chatbots or other text interfaces might be useful in training and experiential learning.
Mr. Robot: 1.51exfiltrati0n is $2.99, available for both iOS and Android
This week we discuss the UX and Instructional Design potential of Gone Home, 2013’s 12th highest rated PC game on MetaCritic and the 2014 Games for Change Game of the Year. It’s also an excellent walking simulator.
Witness, a cooperative crime-solving mystery board game, is on our minds.
Super Mario Maker, a game for the Wii U, could probably support entire books about the approaches and design choices it reflects. 
Brandon introduces Pandemic Legacy and its applications of cooperative learning principles in this week’s shorter “lockpick” episode.