Undercover UXO - A serious game to teach children to avoid landmines

Corey Bohil and Michael Jeffery

Extended Abstract

We designed a game to teach children in war-torn countries the warning signs of landmines and other unexploded ordnance. Students in a game design course (in MSU's Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, & Media) created the game (entitled "Undercover UXO") for the Golden West Humanitarian Foundation (GWHF) - an organization dedicated to education and eradication of landmines and unexploded ordnance worldwide.

The project demanded creative thinking to address several unique game design challenges, including: Challenge 1) The game will be deployed on the One Laptop Per Child program's XO laptop. The XO has a small screen, limited storage and processing capacity, and runs a Linux operating system, necessitating a platform-neutral solution. We decided to use Python and the Pygame development environment, and the game required a great deal of custom programming. Challenge 2) The game should teach players to spot various warning signs that suggest the presence of explosive devices. GWHF wanted a game with realistic terrains and objects to promote learning transfer to the real world, and supplied us with a corpus of photos from Cambodia and Burma (likely target locations). Furthermore, we needed to create a game in which terrain was customizable for different countries. Our solution was a game in which the player navigates a randomly generated maze - each location represented by one of the terrain photos - to complete a series of explorations. For customization, we created a specialized tool to enable future designers to easily insert new background images and mark them with coordinates for random placement of potential warning indicators (e.g., barbed wire, animal remains). Challenge 3) Because the game is intended for use in several countries, it must be extensible for different languages (target audiences neither speak English nor read). Thus all verbal communication (e.g., instructions) is done with audio files. GWHF will record alternate language translations and simply swap the customized audio files. XO buttons used during game play are indicated onscreen with simple icons.

Players navigate randomly-generated mazes (series of static terrain images) along with a virtual "pet" (inspired by the popular Tamagotchi virtual pets) they must care for. During each "mission", the player navigates in search of food for their pet. Using the XO's directional pad, players may "walk" forward, left, or right. The objective is to learn to spot embedded danger signs (e.g., abandoned buildings, posted warnings) and avoid these areas. There is also an option to call a realistically-attired "inspector" to block off dangerous areas. Calling the inspector when real danger is present causes the pet to become more animated and happy. Calling the inspector when no danger is present makes the pet less active and sad. Finding food causes the pet to evolve into a larger, more complex form. Walking into a danger zone, however, leads to an explosion (depicted with visual and audio), the pet devolves to a previous state, and the player returns home to begin again. Keeping the pet happy and growing while avoiding mistakes comprise the main objectives of the game.