A. Our program is not trying to teach new material. We are reinforcing material that the students have already learned in class. Therefore, we are assuming that the users have heard of (even if they don't remember details about) the thirteen colonies and the important people in them.
Q. Does the game change each time?
A. Yes. We feel that this is one of the biggest strengths of our program -- we are using enough randomization so that each time, users get different mysteries, sequences of colonies, and puzzles. Because all of these things are randomized, even if the user gets the same mystery twice, s/he will not be repeating all the same steps to solve the mystery.
Q. Isn't this game Eurocentric, especially the opening screen which shows boats coming over to the colonies from Europe?
A. Yes. But their curriculum is about British settlement in the colonies, so that's what we have to cover. To broaden the students' perspectives a little, we are including slaves and Native Americans in the game (see below).
Q. Isn't there danger that the random shark maulings will give students the wrong idea about sharks in the colonies?
You're right. We'll hvae random alligator maulings instead.
Q. Can lower levels have easier questions instead of fewer questions?
That's a good idea -- if we have time, we'll implement different levels of questions.
Q. Can you get through the game while skipping the learning parts?
No. The entire game is focused on learning, and there are no simply "playing" parts. Students have to answer questions and solve puzzles in order to figure out where to go next AND in order to solve the mystery -- they cannot win the game unless they have gathered all the puzzle pieces (which they get by answering questions) even if they have gone through the right sequence of colonies.
Q. Will the Hall of Fame produce competition in the classroom?
In order to make the Hall of Fame as non-competitive as possible, we have decided either to just include students' names (based on the number of cases they have solved) or to rank them by number of cases, rather than by score.
Q. Is all the time-consuming animation really necessary?
Good point -- we'll leave the animation until the end and see if we have time to do it. Instead, we'll just use regular graphics.
Q. Why aren't some of the characters slaves or Native Americans?
We discussed this, but thought it would be extremely unrealistic to have slaves and Native Americans wandering freely throughout the colonies and talking to lots of settlers. Instead, we have slave and Native American characters that users can talk to when they travel to different colonies.
Q. Is all this technically feasible?
A. We certainly hope so! The only technically complicated parts of our program are the integration of sound, which should not be that hard since it is not coordinated with on-screen events, animation, which can be replaced with pictures if necessary, and randomization, which is definitely feasible in Authorware.