From a young age, I have had an express interest in games and the community that the experience of playing games can afford. Through my time at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I have gained a passion for creating and fostering community and collaborative environments for various people, ranging from students to staff members that I have had the privilege to work alongside. I pride myself on thinking outside the box to create unique solutions to traditional problems and through this exploration of my interests Space Escape was born.
Space Escape is a collaborative tile-based board game where teams of players are pushed to work together to accomplish their goals using a variety of strategies. From a design perspective, the primary learning outcome of this project is to reinforce the importance of both collaboration and communication to build a bond within teammates. The game also pushes players to think strategically about their actions to complete their designated goals. Through play test sessions I have seen growth in all of the areas that have been measured: Collaboration, Communication, and Strategy Implementation.
Gamification can be used for more than just entertainment and I really loved using this project to further explore the way that games can be implemented to promote the advancement of skill sets as well as how they can be used to further build team dynamics between people.
