Game Idea A Week: Cultural Treasures

Week Four (26/10/2009)

The Idea for this week is based on learning about different world cultures through dance, music, traditional games, buildings and food.

Platform:

Wii, or potentially any.

Why it needs to be made:

As the world becomes more of a global community, local cultures are being forgotten or merged. This game will give an entertaining way to learn about different cultures and allow the player to remember each culture in their own manner.

Description:

The player is presented with a map of the world with approximately four countries/cultures that they can learn about within each of the major geographic regions. Each time one of the mini-games is completed the player is given (or can choose) a token to remember that country, e.g. for Egypt the player could choose a pyramid, a sphinx, a mummy, etc...

The mini-games relate to an aspect of each culture/country.

• Dance is about the player either using a Wiimote or controller to perfect moves from a traditional dance.
• Music is similar, but the player must keep the beat for a traditional song.
• For the "games" section, the player plays a traditional game that children play in this culture. For example, in France people play "petanque/bocce", in Japan people play "Go", "Nine Men's Morris" is from Egypt and so on.
• To learn about buildings from different cultures, the player is shown some building styles from that country, then they must look at a set of other houses and pick out which element does not fit in. For example, a Victorian stain-glass window on a Japanese temple.
• For the food mini-game, participants learn how to make traditional food. This is done by telling them the name of the dish to create, giving them some hints about the ingredients, and then getting the player to choose the four key ingredients (from out of the many ingredients shown) to make the dish.

Why it will be a compelling game:

The mini-games themselves will be quite fun, so that the player isn't getting the new knowledge forced down their throat. The player gets to choose their own way to remember the countries so that they feel some level of ownership. The cultures are very diverse, so each country's mini-games will have a very different feel to them (particularly the traditional games) and will therefore mean the game doesn't get very repetitive and boring.

Other thoughts: