Match application (BG)

Save the Animals: a Multimedia Game

This application illustrates the possibility to design multimedia games with Match. 

1. Description

1.1. Initial setting

When entering the application, the child finds himself in a “rezervat” (preserve?) where he is asked by the manager of the rezervat to help finding an animal which is in danger  - either left his region voluntary or was kidnapped. 
In the rezervat there are three types of regions: salt lake, tropic wood, micro-world. The fauna includes sea fish, mammals, birds, amphibians, insects. A list of the animals that live in the rezervat is given in Table 1. 

Table 1: List of the animals in the rezervat

Tropic animals

American alligator
Common boa constrictor
Chimpanzee
Tasmanian devil
Eastern gray kangaroo
Green iguana
Jaguar
Milky stork
Green and black poison arrow frog
Scarlet macaw	Slow loris 
True two-toed sloth
Common wombat
Malayan tapir
Pygmy hippopotamus
Single-wattled cassowray
Queensland koala
Sumatran rhinoceros 
Emu
Toucan
Rhinoceros beetle	

Insects

Mosquito
Butterfly
Praying mants
Fly
Tarantula
Old world vipers	Dragonfly
Honeybee
Praying mantis
Pallid Bad
Short-horned grasshopper	

Sea

Octopus
Lobster
Shrimp
Whale
Dolphin
Starfish	Eel
Sea horse
Loggerhead sea turtle
Green sea turtle
Sunflower star

1.2. 	Scenario

For each of the three types of regions in the rezervat there are three animals which the child can search for (in the current design of the game) and more than 20 animals which he can meet while searching. For each of the animals met, the child can obtain additional information.

The child has to find the animal quickly - before it leaves the area of the rezervat. In this process he can use available information, support tools, equipment, help. 

He can: 

•	get information about the animal’s location (from an electronic chip assigned to  each animal in the rezervat)

•	explore the map of the rezervat in different scales (zoom-in/out); 

•	look into animals’ “passports” - structured unified data for each animal, including picture and sound; 

	NAME: Chimpanzee 
Latin name: Pan troglodytes
HOME: Tropical rain forests, deciduous woodlands, or mixed savannas north and east of the Zaire River in Africa
STATUS: Endangered 
FAVORITE FOODS: Fruit, leaves, seeds, bark, resin, honey, insects, eggs, baboons, bush pigs 	

•	get help from other animals if able to answer their questions. 

The child has to choose appropriate clothing and equipment: there are 5 groups of equipment from which he can choose depending on the region in which he will search. 

When in the region, the child can hear sounds and has to follow the direction from which the sound comes. If no sound can be heard, the child can look for a little while on an electronic map where the locations of the animal and of the child are indicated by light. Depending on this information the child continues (and finds himself in a new page). 
There he meets another animal, leaving there. The animal offers help but if only the child can answer some question about this animal. To answer the questions, the child can look into the  electronic database with animals’ “passports”. Depending on the answer, the child is shown the right way or (when the answer is wrong) has to choose among three directions, only one of which is the right one. Some of the wrong directions lead to incomplete pages, where a “playful ghost” tells the child how to complete the page. 

3. 	Application specifics

•	designed as a game, in which the player identifies himself with the main character in the game and pursues a specific goal: find an animal that has disappeared
•	reusability aspect: the initial state is randomly selected among a pre-defined number of states
•	extendibility aspect: designed as an open system - some of the pages are not finished - the child can finish them and add more pages thus extending the game by himself

4. 	Learning aspects

•	developing ability for problem solving by incrementally generating a strategy and selecting appropriate options/tools from a number of possibilities;
•	applying and building new knowledge in the field of biology: about different types of animals, their natural environment and specifics; 
•	developing visual memory and building skills for space orientation - North, East, West, South - while using a map in different scales;
•	building skills for orientation in structured data: searching for a particular piece of information in a data base-like set; 
•	practicing memorization and decision making

4. 	Data/resources to be collected and developed

•	animated main character, animals, flora: bushes, trees, ...
•	pictures of the rezervat landscape: rocks, bridges, rivers, clouds, ...
•	animal’s passports - data about the animals: name, home, food, status, picture, sound, specifics…
•	questions and answers about each animal

5. 	Final product

•	a story with a set of complete interactive pages, enabling to find the animal by exploring the reservat, and a set of incomplete pages, enabling the child to extend the game
•	a library of animated images used in the pages + additional images which can be used for extending the game 
•	library of elements used in the pages + additional elements, related to the game: buttons, pictures, texts, sounds, ...