Routes

Alice announced on her fantastic Wonderland blog the start of a new project Channel 4 Education did together with Welcome Trust and Oil Productions.
Today, dear students, we’ll be learning about DNA and genome, the fun way. By playing Routes.

The 8-week during game will contain a lot of platforms as players play mini-games (obviously), solve puzzles and watch comedian Katherine Ryan as she discovers what exactly defines who she is. Is it our genes, or does our environment play a bigger role there?

They kick off with a first mini-game where you get an organism. When breeding with other players, your organism evolves, creating a lineage you can look back upon.  You can show off your organism by using widgets like the one below:

Feel free to breed, but please, be gentle ;)

For those looking for a bit more challenge, the real game starts on monday and there will be prizes ;)

I can’t tell you how excited I am about this. Using games to educate people is a strategy not explored enough and hugely underestimated. On the other hand, I can imagine projects like these don’t come cheap so my hat of to Channel 4 for seeing the value of this.