Adventures in Morphing a Cross-Platform Educational Game

Publication Date

8-10-2026

Conference/Sponsorship/Institution

Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games

Description

Game development projects often evolve over time as new technologies, collaborators, and research opportunities emerge. This paper looks at the evolution of Anonymized Game, which is an educational game that helps to teach the concept of recursion. Over the past years, the project expanded from being a small desktop game to a multi-institutional research platform that collects data on how the game is being played. In addition to technical development, the project incorporated interdisciplinary collaboration with students in the music and art departments, while maintaining a mentoring-based development model that emphasized student involvement. As the project expanded to support desktop, tablet, and headset augmented reality platforms, the development team faced several challenges, including coordinating work across institutions and time zones, managing code branches and testing environments, and adapting to rapidly evolving technologies. This paper discusses these challenges and describes lessons learned from the development process. In particular, we highlight strategies such as platform-dependent scripting, iterative planning using Scrum-inspired practices, and the development of tooling to support faster testing and evaluation cycles. These insights provide practical guidance for long-term, student-driven game development projects that aim to support both educational games and research initiatives.

Type

Conference Paper

Department

Computer Science

Second Department

Music

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS