Week 4- Gaming Literacies

 

Gaming Literacies: Game Review

Sugar, Sugar: “Addictive like sugar but don’t be fooled”

I chose the game Sugar, Sugar, which is found on shockwave.com and also on hoodmath.com and coolmath-games.com. It is a game I let my students play for a few minutes at the end of the period in my Introduction to Engineering classes because it involves logic, strategy and skill to solve the problem. I feel this relates to the engineering process in many ways. The game requires you to draw lines to funnel enough sugar towards a cup until it is full. The levels get progressively harder and more challenging and the game is very addictive. There are 30 levels and after that a free play mode is unlocked where the students can design their own challenges, which involves higher cognitive skills.  The students have to think ahead to what they want to do and plan a sequence of events to get the desired results. 

There is very little text or dialogue in this game. It is a trial and error scenario, with a few textual clues. In the first four levels you are told to “draw with the mouse to get enough sugar into the cup”. If you get stuck there is a reset button. In another few levels the player is told, “white sugar goes in the white cup and red sugar goes in the red cup. Sift your sugar through the filter”. In the next the level, players are told, “there is a hole in the ground”. Students are expected to figure out what to do after that.

The video and graphic elements of this game are what is interesting. The interface is clean and bright. The cups and filters are very graphic and the sugar looks like real sugar falling. There are numbers on the cups to tell you how much sugar they need and it counts down as it fills. Students are expected to identify the meaning through the graphics and animation of the sugar falling, the filter colors, arrow directions and the cups and numbers.

The audio element of the game is a bit mesmerizing and in a classroom a little annoying. I usually turn it off. It is a repetitive drumbeat and though the students like it, when multiple players are on I ask them to turn it off. There is an audio queue when a level has been beaten and I notice it triggers an excited response from the students when it plays.

As far as scenario design this game has no embedded scenario. Much like Tetris, Sugar Sugar is a strategy game that develops students reasoning, problem solving and logical design abilities. It is trial and error learning that reinforces players reasoning abilities.

I know if you try Sugar Sugar, you won’t be able to stop.

 http://www.shockwave.com/gamelanding/sugar-sugar.jsp