Hypothesis
Education + Entertainment = Edutainment
I believe that every adventure game has
some degree of edutainment value. We have had to learn new numbering
systems, interpret cultural symbols and patterns and even decipher
representational sounds. Games like Aztec, Egypt 1156 B.C., and Titanic:
An Adventure Out of Time are examples of one type of edutainment game.
They usually include an encyclopedia within the game, as an extra bonus.
These in-game encyclopedias are usually informative and can add quite a
lot to your enjoyment of the game, but since it isn’t necessary to use
them to complete the game, I consider this type of game to be ‘lite-edutainment.’
However the elite of the edutainment games
ideally focus on one subject, and you will need to use a particular
reference source throughout these games. For example, Nacah and Derek use
specific verses from the King James version of the Bible as clues for most
of the puzzles. Over the past few years, Tivola has developed a
line of edutainment games based on academic subjects. And entertaining
they are!
Welcome to Biology 101
Bioscopia is a research compound where
experiments were performed to provide robots with a new level of
artificial intelligence through biological means. The goal was to provide
the robots with enough human traits so that they would be suitable for
slave labor. But these experiments went amiss and allowed the robots to
take control of the compound. Most of the scientists who conducted these
experiments presumably escaped. One assistant boldly intercedes and cuts
off the main energy source to the robots, prohibiting them from leaving
Bioscopia.
Our part in the story begins with a young,
enthusiastic scientist and her journey to find the Bioscopia compound.
Once she arrives at the compound, she inadvertently returns some power to
the robots that then take her captive using poisonous gases. She will
need a special antidote to save her life. You, the gamer, will need to
discover what that antidote is and how to make it. Now that the robots
are functional again, they will attempt to prohibit your access to parts
of the compound, so you will also need to figure out how to gain entry to
those sections.
As you step inside the Bioscopia compound
you immediately get the feeling of being trapped, as a large metal gate
slams shut behind you. The surrounding area seems almost devoid of any
natural beauty and has the appearance of having been abandoned quite a
long time ago. You are facing a myriad of old metal structures and huge
brick walls that have unkempt ivy trailing over them. The concrete roadway
is a cracked and weeds are creeping through. Ahead of you is another
large gate that is locked. The street is lined with large boulders and
metal barrels leading to a locked building. On the right is a rusty ladder
that leads to a room that overlooks the compound.
Pop Quiz
Seems like the typical adventure game;
solve puzzles to advance the story and open new areas. But in this type
of edutainment game, nearly all the answers are included in a single
reference source; in Bioscopia this reference source is the Big Brain.
The Big Brain is a computer containing information about biology. It’s
divided into five separate biology subjects; botany, cellular biology,
genetics, human biology and zoology. Using the Big Brain is fairly
simple. You choose one of the biology subjects, and then make a selection
from one of the subcategories. You can choose as much time or as little
time as you wish to read each of the different topics. Narration
accompanies all the information in the Big Brain, and many of the topics
have illustrations.
There are a lot of puzzles that are
multiple choice questions. When you are doing the multiple choice
questions, you can either attempt to answer the question or visit the Big
Brain to find the answer. There is no penalty for incorrect answers – this
made it a lot of fun to attempt to answer the questions on my own. Most
of the other puzzles are mechanical and inventory types. There are some
sound and color-based puzzles, but there are no sliders, mazes, or timed
puzzles. The Bioscopia complex itself is a bit confusing, though, and you
may want to map it out for your own convenience.
Audio-Visual Aides
In comparison to some other games released
the same year, the graphics in Bioscopia are simplistic, but are still
quite good. Most details are clear, and I found very few spots that had
even the smallest degree of pixelation or graininess. I applaud
the game designers’ choice to not make the game world totally indoors. By
creating an environment that allows for quite a bit of outdoor wandering,
they were able to show details that helped immerse you deeper into the
game. Grass that grows wild, overgrown weeds, vines creeping along
neglected paths – all added to my feeling that I really was in an
abandoned compound.
What I found most appealing about the
graphics was how well they were integrated with the sounds. Watching the
doors sliding shut or levers turning, the squeaking seemed to echo in the
silence. The sounds some of the buttons make when you push them makes it
clear that they are made of a rubbery type of material. Background sounds
are realistic and abundant. The birds chirp gaily when you are outside,
breaking the stillness, and lending an authentic air to the solitude of
your surroundings. While most locations do not have background music, the
little music the game does have is very pleasant. Speech is limited to
the Big Brain computer and video sequences. You have the option to have
most of the lines of speech repeated to you -- I never had to because they
were exceptionally clear the first time.
Open Your Books
The game is played entirely from a first
person point of view. The game is a 2D photorealistic slideshow with
several FMV (full motion video) sequences. The recommended screen
resolution is 1024 X 768, which allows the game to utilize about 75% of
your screen. I would have preferred full screen instead. You can play it
in 800 X 600, but it feels as if you are playing in a very small window.
Installation is done from the first disc and the game is played entirely
from the second disc so there is no disc swapping.
Menu options are accessible via a CD icon
above the game window in the upper right corner. These options include
save, load, quit game, volume control, turning the narrator on/off and
screen fade on/off. The screen fade describes how the screens slide from
one scene to the next. Saving and loading are simple, and the game
provides unlimited saves, as well as a warning if you want to overwrite a
previous save. The only other option in the game menu is quick access to
the Big Brain.
Inventory is easily managed and never
cumbersome. At the lower right, below the game screen, is a metal
canister that holds everything. One click on the canister and it will
slide open to reveal everything you have. Adding things to your inventory
involves the typical drag and drop motion with the mouse.
Most of the navigation throughout the game
is straightforward and completely mouse-driven. There is the pointing
finger for going forward, left, right, up, down and turning around. An
open hand indicates that some type of interaction can take place.
However, there are times where you may miss the difference between going
forward and going up or down because the hand cursors are extremely
similar. This was only a minor annoyance, and did not happen often. A
slightly bigger annoyance was the lack of any indication of some
hotspots. These can be a bit confusing in the beginning until you become
accustomed to them.
Final Exam
You do not need to be a biology whiz to
enjoy Bioscopia. In fact you need no biology knowledge at all. You only
need to enjoy learning something new. More than once I found myself
looking for a particular answer in the Big Brain, but allowed myself to be
sidetracked into reading more than I really needed to know at that point.
The information was a great deal more interesting than I remembered
biology to be. I also found that the multiple choices questions were a
good way to test my own level of basic biology. They also occasionally
provided humorous touches as in this example:
What significantly disturbs the ecological balance of the
earth?
1) The clearing of the rainforest
2) Physical Education
3)
Homework
4)
If Biology had been this much fun when I
was in school, I probably would have had significantly better grades.
Final Grade: B+
Recommended Edutainment Games:
Physicus
Chemicus
Nacah
Isles of
Derek
Recommended Lite-Edutainment Games:
Aztec
Egypt 1156
B.C.
Egypt II
The Egyptian Prophesy
Paris 1313
Pilgrim
The
Messenger
Titanic:
An Adventure out of Time
design copyright ©
2005
GameBoomers
Group
