Pangea - An Interactive Educational Experience

An interactive learning experience made in one week for the Indigestible Game Jam and my science homework. This game uses just the mouse and arrow keys, but was not my original concept.  The original idea was that the player plays as the supercontinent known as Pangea with the goal to keep Alfred Wegener alive as long as possible. Alfred was the scientists who proposed the idea that the continents were not always separate but instead together. The player needs to keep the AI Alfred Wegener from being killed by the anti Pangeans. The player can select two pieces of crust on the map and select a certain plate boundary. This can be used to either create obstacles for the AI enemies, the dumb AI Alfred Wegener, and to create new land of a different kind of land. This idea was pretty spectacular but ended up being unrealistic. I had completed all the models and plate selection but after hours not being able to figure out a realistic way of recreating plate tectonics I decided that I had to do something else. Instead of throwing everything I had away I decided to turn it into an interactive learning experience. One week was not enough time to do what I wanted but I took what I had and made the minimum viable product.

This was my first ever game jam and I hope to continue participating in more game jams as time progresses. Throughout this game jam alone I have learned a tremendous amount. I faced one of the greatest challenges when participating in a jam such as this, a lack of time. I spent a good amount of time on one thing realizing I have nowhere near enough time to do another thing. I also experience the benefit of sleep during a game jam, but not in the way one might expect. While working on the game I would be attempting something before going to sleep. I would lay down and discover something, whether that is that what I am currently doing makes no sense or how exactly I plan on doing something. It is a great reflection period.

Also check out my trello to see my devlog at https://trello.com/b/I3fQsJX2/game-jams.