The Kids Research Institute Australia, operates an interactive, educational space within the Perth Children’s Hospital called The Discovery Centre. It is filled with kiosks, games, puzzles, and toys designed to educate and inform children about health topics and the role The Kids research plays. The Kids, having run the Discovery Centre for several years, wanted a new game to balance and complement their existing offerings.
The Challenge
The Kids wanted to develop a new game that would deploy to a pre-existing custom set up, a projector and touch surface design for 4 users to stand at each compass point. Many of the existing games and kiosks relied heavily on reading, as such they found many children would bounce off them quickly, especially younger children. As such this new game should make limited use of words and be more appealing to younger players. When groups of children would visit the Discovery Centre all at once, such on a school excursion or out of school care trip, they found that one existing game would end up being heavily favoured among the children. Resulting in crowding, scawbling, or waiting to play this most interesting thing in the room. As such, this new game should also be highly engaging, have a short session length, and be replayable, allowing larger groups to move between more things in the room. The project was also quite constrained, a short and prompt delivery date, a limited budget, and a requirement to fit within the existing Discovery Centre brand and theming.
The Solution
Actuator Digital proposed and was accepted to act as The Kids game development team. To keep within budget constraints, the project was run on a skeleton crew. To keep within the timeline, the design would take inspiration from existing bitesized experiences that were engaging to the target age bracket. To ensure the new game would fit The Kids goals the project began with a trip to The Discovery Centre for in personal physical analysis of the hardware and observation of children’s use of the existing offerings to best augment the existing offerings in expanding appeal and experience.
Multiple gameplay prototypes were developed, with a co-op, slingshot, colour matching mechanic being selected. With the game developed in a matter of weeks, another trip to The Discovery Centre with a release candidate for installation testing, and user testing with school visits to the centre.
Result
The Kids acted as the driving force for the goals of Actuator Digital’s Game Development team, in personal consultation with key stakeholders, hands on with the custom hardware and in person playtesting of the new game all proved to be invaluable in honing the new game into something special. An addition to The Discovery Centre that allowed younger visitors to engage in the space, spread attention throughout the space, and provide a voice for elements of The Kids areas of research that wanted more representation. The new game was deployed by The Kids into The Discovery Centre in 2024 as part of NAIDOC Week, with elements of the game’s theme and messaging coming from the Indigenous Holistic Health Framework, and visual sprites commissioned from an Indigenous Graphic Designer.