Games for Entertainment and Learning (GEL) Games
Village Builder
Village Builder is a real-time strategy, village construction management game for school children in Sub-Saharan Africa. The game features prosocial objectives with cognitive reasoning and planning goals. The game serves as an alternative to traditional computerized cognitive rehabilitation therapy (CCRT). It is being used with HIV inflected children in Malawi and Uganda and is currently in a clinical research trial to gauge effectiveness.
Investment Runner
Embark on your Wild West journey into learning about investments, the stock market, and trading in Investment Runner. Grow your brokerage and help your clients grow their wealth as you run from town to town, avoiding the hazards of the American frontier.
Brain Powered Games Africa 2.0
Brain Powered Games Africa 2.0 is a major update to a collection of cognitive games developed for the African context. Working with MSU neurologists and psychiatrists, each game focuses on exercising one or more cognitive abilities, including attention, memory, language, visual/spatial functions, and executive functions. The games serve as is computerized cognitive rehabilitation therapy (CCRT) with HIV inflected children in Malawi and Uganda and is currently in a clinical research trial to gauge effectiveness.
Career Clubhouse
Career Clubhouse allows high school students to explore career options and the resulting life choices and consequences in a fun, immersive VR game.
Aseptic Training VR Simulator
The Aseptic Training VR Simulator allows medical students and professionals to be trained in and practice aseptic technique in a safe environment.
Island Saver
You are an explorer who discovered a wondrous island populated by monsters....unfortunately, the future of the monsters are threatened by an exploding volcano! Team up, navigate the hostile island environment, and collect threatened monster eggs to deliver them to a nearby safe island. Along the way you can also collect, save, and deposit treasure to aid you in your quest.
Quantum 3
Qauntum3 is an educational mobile game where the addictive match-3 genre meets Quantum Physics! This game will have the average person building subatomic particles called baryons, including the two most famous, Protons and Neutrons. Given a grid of hexes, which represents the building blocks of baryons called quarks, the player will match trios of red, green, and blue hexes to form different baryons, gain powerups, and progress through a variety of levels while learning about all the particles that make up our world.
Plunder Panic
Plunder Panic is a Swashbuckling, Up to 12-Person Multiplayer Arcade Game where two rival crews battle for supremacy on the high seas. Winner of IndieCade 2017's Audience Choice Award and Official Selection of PAX East 2018's Indie Megabooth! Crew members can plunder gold and return it to their crew’s treasure chest, once they get enough gold they can sail away. Crew members can also purchase a cutlass to earn the ability to attack and battle with enemy captains and opposing crews.
VESTA – Virtual Vineyard
The Virtual Vineyards project is exploring innovative approaches to providing viticulture and enology education to professionals through the use of virtual reality and web technologies.
Dream Racer
The roar of the engine, the thrill of the chase, you can smell first place but it is just out of reach! If only you weren’t driving such a junker… You’ll need to manage your finances as you hit the racing circuit, gain sponsorships, sell old racers, and pick out parts and upgrades to build your very own “dream racer”. So start your engines and burn some rubber. Dream Racer is go-kart racing at its finest!
Swipey Bombs
Swipey BombsSwipey Bombs is an intense addictive action puzzle game where you play a vexed member of the bomb squad in a precarious situation. You must cut the proper wires in the proper order to disarm the bomb. One false swipe and kablooey! This was created as a spin out game from Freaky Deaky Flashback to further promote the film in a focused experience.Game Development Team: Brian Winn: Producer Justin Girard: Lead Designer, Programming Mbongeni Chirunga: Design Christopher ...
Tahir’s Playbook
Tahir’s Playbook challenges players to track their eating, drinking and exercise habits, and engage in a series of mini-games across the week to level up their fitness and prepare for the “Big Game”. Along the way, players earn achievements while being coached and mentored by Tahir Whitehead, a professional football player.
Criminal Procedure: Investigation
“Criminal Procedure: Investigation” is a game that will be integrated into a Michigan State University College of Law course on criminal procedure. The primary purpose of the game is to bring to life criminal procedure law in a dramatic story and allow students to explore the law in an interactive environment.
Kerem B’Yavneh
The fun and quirkiness of your favorite farming and city-building games meet the richness and vibrancy of Jewish ritual, history, and thought. Run a profitable homestead, observe festivals, learn Torah, and experience life and community in ancient Yavneh, the birthplace of modern Judaism.
Saving Draggy
Your baby dragon has gone missing in this magical children’s adventure game! Targeted at kids ages 5-10, children will increase their cognition and understanding of basic financial concepts as they engage in an epic quest to save Draggy.
Empower Flint
This mobile app provides the residents of Flint with the most important and up-to-date action items they should take to protect themselves, their families, and their pets in dealing with the Flint water crisis.
Reach Higher
Help Sparty grab as many cotton tufts and roses as he can before the big game! Jump across platforms, compete for the National Championship highscore and “Reach Higher” in this new holiday action game from the Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab!
Saving with Piggy
Give your child a jump start on their financial literacy! Saving with Piggy is an educational game that helps young children (age 2 to 5) learn about coins by feeding piggy (aka, putting coins in the piggy bank). The game features Piggy, a lovable animated piggy bank that needs help saving coins.
Grumpy Snowmen
Spartan pride is at stake! Across Michigan State University's campus, rival Big Ten schools have set up snow forts populated with Grumpy Snowmen. Help Sparty rid campus of these pesky snowmen in this easy-to-learn, but challenging to master whimsical parody.
Isotopolis
“ Isotopolis” is an exploratory game about the process of discovering rare isotopes. In the game, players accelerate particles and assemble new isotopes in the effort to complete the table of nuclides in a process inspired by what goes on a the nanoscopic level within a cyclotron.
SpaceFun
The goal of the SpaceFun was to build a proof-of-concept motivational exercise activity that was more game-focused in order to create a more enjoyable experience that motivated players to exercise. The latest rendition uses the Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 as our primary controller and viewing device.
Train Like an Astronaut
Train Like An Astronaut is a game developed through a grant from NASA, that is designed to determine whether recently documented motivation gains in task groups (dyads in particular) can be harnessed to improve motivation in interactive exercise games using virtual, software-generated (SG) partners.
Freaky Deaky Flashback
In Freaky Deaky Flashback, you assume the role of an undercover FBI Agent, Daniel Jacobs, immersed in the rebellious counter-culture of the late-1960s. You must infiltrate a group of deviant college students whose peaceful demonstrations have turned explosive.
NIH Cyber Partners
Recent research has shown that exercising with a more capable partner where one’s performance is indispensable to the group leads to greater effort in partnered exergame play. This experimental game includes measures of exercise persistence, perceived exertion, self-efficacy beliefs, enjoyment, and intentions to exercise.
Sparks of Eternity
Sparks of Eternity is a custom, collaboratively designed adventure game between the Games for Entertainment and Learning (GEL) Lab at Michigan State University and the Frankel Jewish Academy. The goal is to foster enhanced engagement in the Academy’s rabbinic curriculum.
Saving Magic
Help the Master Wizard prevent the dragons from stealing magic from the world. To do this, you must climb ancient towers and free the magic coins that are being hoarded in treasure chests by the dragons. But be careful, you may end up finding a dragon on top of the tower!
Brain Powered Games Africa
Brain Powered Games Africa is a growing collection of digital games developed in the Games for Entertainment and Learning (GEL) Lab at Michigan State University. Each game focuses on exercising one or more cognitive abilities, including attention, memory, language, visual/spatial functions, and executive functions.
Spartan Villa
The challenge of learning how credit works, how to implement a monthly budget, and how to properly handle ones finances is that mistakes in real-life during the learning process can be costly. To aid in this challenge, Spartan Villa bridges this gap by creating a realistic financial system embedded in a fun, low-pressure game world.
Ford Driving Skills for Life
Driving Skills for Life provides players with real-world skills that will help them become better drivers on the road. The game is based on the live hands-on driving training events conducted by the Ford Driving Skills for Life program, but available to millions of young drivers around the world on the internet.
DNA Roulette
In DNA Roulette, players bet on whether an individual has a trait (such as brown eyes) or will develop a disease. The odds are based on real world statistics and genetics research. In Round 1, you bet before you know the odds. Round 2 shows general population odds. Round 3 reveals the actual odds based on that person's genes.
EAGER: Motivation and Serious Gaming
Carrie Heeter from the MediaInfo department was awarded a $287,000 two year NSF grant to study motivation and serious gaming. The project is a collaborative effort between MSU and Georgia Tech University with Michigan State as the lead institution.
MSU Green League
Created for MSU’s Environmental Stewards, MSU Green League is a web-based educational game to promote sustainability in everyday decision making. Each player is part of a team and earns points for completing challenges in the workplace. Challenges are real sustainable behaviors that help MSU meet its broad sustainability goals.
Olympus
Olympus is a fantasy role-playing game that allows players to immerse themselves in the wondrous time of Ancient Greek history and myth. Through the use of a unique combination of input devices, the virtual actions of your avatar in the game world are driven by the players corresponding physical actions in the real world.
Tanzanian Trader
Tanzanian Trader is a game designed for Standard 7 students in Tanzania, Africa. The game helps students prepare for the standardized national exam students must take to receive their primary school certificate. The game also helps students develop their computer literacy skills.
Deliberative Games
Deliberative games can become a new genre of serious games (games with a purpose beyond entertainment) that provides an urgently needed, non-partisan, trustworthy medium which supports personal and public deliberation about difficult yet crucial socio-scientific issues.
Investigaming
InvestiGaming.com was an online gateway to academic and industry research on gender and gaming. The idea was to provide a centralized location for all of the existing and future research on gender and gaming. This new level of accessibility is expected to greatly assist both the academic community, as well as commercial game designers.
Cognitive Games for Rehabilitation in Malawi, Africa
An MSU team of medical doctors and psychiatrists researched game technology to assist with the rehabilitation of children with cerebral malaria. The goal was to see if cognitive games are a viable method to aid in the rehabilitation of young patients (age 4 to 12) who suffered cognitive repercussions resulting from malaria.
Kitchen Disasters
In Kitchen Disasters, you play the role of a restaurant manager trying to advance from a small sandwich shop to a 5-star gourmet restaurant while dealing with food safety challenges. The goal is to educate players about proper food handling, preparation, storage and disposal techniques and the importance of overall cleanliness in food safety.
Dealertown Ford
Dealertown Ford is the winning entry in Ford Credit’s “Winning At Money” Challenge. The three-month challenge tasked student game development groups at Big Ten rivals, MSU’s SpartaSoft and UoM’s WolverineSoft, to create an online game that would help educate consumers about using credit responsibly.
Spartan Remix
Spartan Remix is a web-based music construction game that allows players to interactively build, mix, and share their own version of the Michigan State University fight song. The game was developed for the MSU Alumni Association to help build school spirit and maintain a relationship with alumni.
Brain Powered Games
From attention and memory to logic and language skills, our games empower each player to play at their ideal level of challenge – just hard enough to grow, but easy enough to be fun. These “good for you” games can be played in as little as 10 minutes. Each Brain Powered Game is designed to exercise one or more different brain functions.
Headline Clues
Headline CluesHeadline Clues is a new kind of word game.Headline Clues is designed to exercise more advanced verbal and semantic thinking. The game challenges players to solve missing words in a headline. Players are shown a headline and a short summary. One or more words in the headline are missing and players must figure out what the missing words are supposed to be. For each missing word players see the word’s first letter and the number of missing letters. Any time players are ...
Crossroads Village
Crossroads Village is a persuasive real time strategy game designed and developed in the Serious Game Design program at Michigan State University. Players take on the role of a relief organization in dealing with world hunger and other third world crises.
Fantastic Food Challenge
The Michigan Family Nutrition Program (FNP) helps Michigan adults with low income acquire the knowledge, skills and confidence to feed their families nutritious, cost-conscious meals. Education traditionally includes presentation, discussion, hands-on activities and written materials.
Life Preservers
Life Preservers is a video game that teaches National Science standards on evolution, adaptation, and the history of life on earth. It is an engaging, fun, pedagogically rich learning experience that can fit within a single class period. Life Preservers was funded by the National Science Foundation.
Voyage Beijing
Voyage Beijing utilizes the advantages of digital games, such as engagement, motivation and interactivity to teach players crucial information about business travel to China.
Girls As Game Designers
Do girls and boys approach the design process differently? If so, what are the characteristics of a girl-friendly design process? Do all-girl design teams create products that are more appealing to other girls than products designed by all boy teams? Are gender differences more strongly polarized by the end of middle school?
Mudcraft
Mudcraft explored how to design a real-time strategy game for a casual game playing audience. This was a unique and ambitious goal because it attempted to (1) modify the RTS genre to be appealing to casual game players and (2) expose and attract casual gamers to this new genre of games.