Brain Powered Games

Games to grow your brain

Brain Powered Games (BPG) is a collection of games designed by Michigan State University's Games for Education and Learning Lab (GEL Lab) to exercise one or more brain functions. Currently they are developing games to help test and increase brain functionality in children born with Malaria and AIDS.

Currently in development

Roles

- Lead Designer

- Level Designer

- Mechanics Designer

- UI Designer

Responsibilities

- Updated and added onto existing Unity project for a new study with 7 people over 3 months

- Designed and implemented new UI Layouts for both new and existing games

- Worked with programmers to design UI layouts for new systems they were implementing

- Collaborated with other designer to develop new game prototypes through Unity

Simple Game Design

My main goal for the games I was working on at BPG was to turn existing therapy tests and evaluations into fun video games for young children. I made sure to focus on making games out of the therapy tests our client prioritized, while designing around anything that would sacrifice players having fun.

Butterfly Catcher

In Butterfly Catcher, the player is tasked with clicking the butterfly once it glows white, after which it moves again. While updating the UI and game values, I made sure it continued to accurately test the player's reaction speed.

Stampede

Stampede has multiple animals run across the screen, with the player tasked with tapping only one or two specific animals. I implemented the updated UI, as well as helped design a more rewarding difficulty curve.

Pathfinder

In Pathfinder players are tasked with walking through a maze twice, the first time in order for them to learn the maze and the second in order to see if they remember the path. Each session the game records how long each player takes to complete the maze and how many wrong turns they made, allowing the researchers to track how much or little the player improves over time.

Butterfly Catcher

In Butterfly Catcher, the player is tasked with clicking the butterfly once it glows white, after which it moves again. While updating the UI and game values, I made sure it continued to accurately test the player's reaction speed.

1/3

Research and Prototyping

Before developing any new games, I would first ensure that it complimented the other therapy games currently apart of BPG's study. In order to make sure they did, I would do extensive research on past therapy games as well as what types of therapy games we were missing.

After making sure the current game idea would work well in the study, I would prototype the idea in order to clearly communicate how the game would function.