Super Energy Apocalypse: RECYCLED by Brain Juice Games is a Real Time Strategy game (RTS) that explores the pros and cons of different energy-economies by taking real-life data and simulating it in a science-fiction world that turns long-term consequences into immediate consequences.

The interesting thing about these kind of competitions is that you get to see what a really raw game looks like. There usually isn't enough time to have the game completely polished by the deadline. Often times the developer was never able to implement some core idea, or they quickly realized that the game they were building wasn't quite what they thought it was going to be. It is always useful for a designer to get a bit of insight into the design processes used by other designers.

Andy, Joe and I seldom tout our own work. However our team at Web Courseworks has been developing educational games for the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin since 2004. In my post on my Managing eLearning Blog I interview Dr. Schafer about his research on our middle school ATOD prevention curriculum call Its Up 2U.

Questionaut is a simply gorgeously drawn and animated educational game in the same vein as Samarost. The game was created for the BBC's Bitesize series by Samarost creator Amanita Design.  The intent of the Bitesize series is to combine grade school quizzes with online games, and that's what Questionaut is. Your character has a balloon that is fueled by knowledge. In each level, there is a clever point-and-click puzzle that you must solve in order to get the attention of a character, who will then ask you a series of multiple choice questions. Answering a question correctly adds to your fuel, and an incorrect question subtracts from it. Once you have five bubbles of fuel, your balloon has enough fuel to move on to the next challenge. Questions and the levels are thematically related. There is an owl who asks you questions about animals, an old man who questions you on writing, and an ice-skater who lives near a giant bunsen burner quizzes your knowledge of chemistry. Arithmetic, probability, geometry, physics and English are also tested.

Dondlinger, M. J. (2007). Educational video game design: A review of the literature. Journal of Applied Educational Technology, 4(1), 21-31.

Currently accessible at http://www.eduquery.com/jaet/JAET4-1_Dondlinger.pdf .

This article is more than just a categorized bibliography: Dondlinger succinctly pulls out theoretical findings from key sources and highlights areas of scholarly debate (such as sources of motivation in games).