Genre: Adventure, Educational
Release date: February 17, 2017 (Early Access)

IF YOU CAN HEAR THIS BROADCAST, COME AND GET US IMMEDIATELY! THE PIRATES WILL BE RETURNING AT ANY MOMENT. WE ARE ARCHAEOLOGISTS AND THEY THINK WE MAY HAVE DISCOVERED SOME ANCIENT TREASURE (WE HAVEN’T).

PLEASE DON’T WASTE TIME GOING FOR HELP. BY THE TIME YOU RETURN IT COULD BE TOO LATE. JUST COME AND GET US OUT OF HERE.

WE HAVE BARRICADED OURSELVES BEHIND THE OLD ARMY DOORS. THE KEYS TO OPENING THEM ARE BASED ON AN UNDERSTANDING OF SCIENCE, WHICH THE PIRATES OBVIOUSLY LACK. BUT THESE WON’T KEEP THEM OUT FOREVER.

PLEASE HELP…

Just hearing the word “Edutainment” makes me cringe. It brings visions of happy little cartoon creatures trying to teach us our ABCs while playing boring games. It rarely works.

But when I saw this Kickstarter campaign I was intrigued. The graphics are top-quality 3D open world renderings of a tropical island. The background music is orchestral. The subject matter is high school level or better. And there isn’t a single widdle bunny wabbit to be seen.

So I gave it a shot and backed the project for a copy of the game. Two-and-a-half months later, the Steam keys arrived. Wow. That is the fastest I have ever seen a game delivered. Of course, it isn’t quite finished. There are still some rough spots in the game play and there are several place holders for still unwritten music.

The completed game of three chapters is expected to release this May, but the current version is quite playable. It is a classic adventure game – you explore and find diary pages which help you unlock the next obstacle. But the solutions each rely on an understanding of some scientific principle.

From the Kickstarter page…

Science Content

The science content (with its associated argumentation and reasoning) is sequenced in the following way:

Chapter 1 covers the origins of science, and the shift from the flat earth of the Pre-socratics to the spherical earth and physics of Aristotle.

Chapter 2 covers the shift from the geocentric universe of Ptolemy to the heliocentric universe of Copernicus and Galileo.

Chapter 3 covers the tussle between Galileo and the followers of Aristotle on free fall motion.

This campaign is for chapters 1-3 of the game. After releasing them, we plan to continue the story in a sequel, which would cover the following chapters:

Chapter 4 would cover the mathematics of uniformly accelerated motion as developed by Galileo (1D kinematics)

Chapter 5 would cover Galileo’s ideas about inertia and the mathematics of projectile motion (2D kinematics)

Chapter 6 would complete the birth of a new physics with the construction of the three Laws of Motion and Universal Gravitation by Newton.

As you can see, this is not your Sesame Street ABCs and it does require some simple math.

Overall, I was quite impressed and enjoyed playing the game. And yes, I did learn something about the history of Western science.