interactive museums

2003.09.25

Dr. Noah presented Save the Shells, an educational game designed to teach players about tortoises and their environmental needs.

Save the Shells feels like board game. The player clicks on a spinner, which determines how many spaces he or she can move. The objective is to move from the bottom left hand corner of the screen to the glowing target rectangles before the development can overrun the tortoise's habitat. Landing on certain squares causes different events, such as the player gaining moves, a hurricane occurring, or a quiz being administered. The quiz provides a way for the player to gain moves based on knowledge of tortoises and their environment, and all the information from the quiz can be garnered from elsewhere in the program. Additionally, tips are given if the player answers incorrectly, allowing some reinforcement of ideas.

Some of the features in the program are very good. The spinner, for example, is both well animated and useful, as it conveys the idea of random value selection better than a random number generator or similar non-graphical method would. Similarly, the calendar indicating the month is more effective than simple text would be in demonstrating passage of time. Also, the 'gameboard'-ish design is familiar to most players, and allows them to easily get comfortable with the game.

However, there are also problems with this program. It gets rather repetitive to continue to play the game, as each scenario builds onto the previous one; this causes the player to redo tasks. Also, there are some minor issues with text that does not appear as it should during the course of the game. More importantly, though, the game needs to have more learning enforcement. The player gets some enforcement if they ask for a tip, but in the quizzes, they can simply guess the correct answer without knowing why it was correct. A message explaining why the answer is correct after it is answered would help enforcing what the player should be learning.

Overall, Save the Shells accomplishes its goal of teaching players about tortoises and their environmental needs. It could use some more enforcement of learning, and a few minor technical fixes, but the program seems like a useful tool.