Biosphere 2.1

The entire interior of the dome can transform into an inclusive, cooperative game for its visitors. The game will likely begin as a surprise to its participants, with the game dynamics being simple, scaffolded, and explained by pre-recording narration. Participants may be pulled into the wonder of the exhibit from ephemeral narration and a dark, mysterious tone where the players must step up to be heroes.

The lights of the dome slowly turn off as darkness overcomes the dome. The goal for the people inside of the dome is to fight off the darkness with light by manually touching each inactive light to turn it on. Lights will turn off again if enough time has passed without being activated.

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Participants must work together to turn all of the lights back on, and once they do, then that level will be complete.
Levels can increase in difficulty by deactivating a greater number of lights, introducing patterns of lights deactivating, and/or employing a shorter time period between activation and deactivation.

The game is elaborated using the elements outlined by Fullerton (2014) below.

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Players: Everyone - collaboratively

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Objective:  To keep the lights on.

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Procedure: The starting action is the beginning of each level, which occurs most dramatically at the very start of the game and before each level, dictated by narration and a drastic deactivation of lights. Audio narration will provide instructions on how participants should proceed. The progression of action is the ongoing gameplay that happens in no particular order. The computer will turn off some lights, while the players attempt to keep the lights on by touching the inactive lights to activate them.
 

Play: It is an easy game to play, with few rules. There is a lot of potential for ‘free play’.

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Story: The game objectives, rules, and educational merit will be delivered through narration and story. The narrator of the story is the environment of the dome, personified (not dissimilar to the character of “mother nature”).

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Win: The use of a variable reward has the power to keep people interested (Eyal & Hoover, 2014).
After successful completion of each level, one of many possible light shows will play as well as a congratulatory message and story progression from the narration.

At the very end of the game, a compartment of the centrepiece will open revealing a ‘take-something-leave-something’ treasure chest. Such a win scenario will act as a memorable surprise, a secret worth sharing by word-of-mouth, and a variable reward, since the contents of this compartment will change as people gain access to it.

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The Levels

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Below is an outline of potential levels for the game within Biosphere 2.1. Playtesting is recommended with the physical exhibit to determine which elements, rules, and features are fun, promote cooperation, and induce flow (Fullerton, 2014).

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Level 1 - Learning Gameplay
The first level of the game is designed to be very easy and impossible to lose. The goal is to provide an enjoyable experience and to teach players how to play.

Lights will deactivate only one at a time to minimize changes and confusion, and easily provide signalling to the deactivated light. Different colour or flashing of nearby lights can be utilized if additional signalling is necessary to locate the one deactivated light.

Level 2 - Speed round of simple lights
The second level incorporates the same simple on/off for the lights. To make things more challenging, many lights go off at once. Lights will also be on a timer, so once a light has been activated, it will deactivate itself if the level is not complete.

Once all the lights are on at the same time, then the level will be complete.

Level 3 - Introduction to ‘coupled lights’
‘Coupled lights’ will be two lights that must be deactivated at the same time forcing cooperation amongst players. A different light setting will be utilized to demonstrate which lights are ‘coupled’ such as dim coloured light, or light that flashes between off and coloured. Lights that are coupled will share the same colour (i.e. red or blue).

The third level will introduce players to ‘coupled lights’, one at a time similar to how level 1 introduced gameplay. Simple lights will also be interspersed to remind players of their rules.

Level 4 - Speed round of ‘coupled lights’
The fourth level is an escalation of the concept introduced in the third level, where multiple ‘coupled lights’ exist at the same time, and will automatically deactivate if enough time passes between activation. This level is similar to Level 2, except with 'coupled lights'.

Level 5 - Speed round all together
The final level includes the simple lights and the coupled lights simultaneously.

 

There are many opportunities for creative rules to be incorporated such as a ‘travelling darkness’ where light needs to be interacted with at the correct moment, ‘mine’ lights where if they are interacted with will infect nearby lights with darkness, ‘mystery’ lights that ought to be interacted with but do not visually appear-so and are signalled with sound or other nearby lights.
To reiterate, this gameplay is flexible and should be playtested and iterated to find an optimal set of rules.

 

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