Building a customisable eLearning Snake-style game - Early teaser release!

Mobile technology has transformed pretty much every aspect of our lives, changing how we communicate, work, learn and - importantly - play. This technological transformation can feel like a relatively recent phenomenon, but for readers that can remember having a Nokia 3210, you’ll know that the OG mobile game was Snake! It was easy to play and very addictive. So how can it improve learning engagement today?

Creating memorable learning experiences

One of the key focuses for the Konnektis eLearning team is finding memorable ways of making education content as engaging as possible for the Learner while also keeping it accessible so that anyone can have an equal experience.

The development team has just completed an adventure-themed platform gamelet that we will release a blog about shortly. This project led to one of our developers having a great idea: can we use the addictive nature of well-known, easy-to-play games and leverage it so that people can learn in a genuinely gamified way? To develop this concept, we went back in time to 1999 for inspiration. A Snake-style game seemed an ideal starting point since it is score-based and can be of infinite length, so we got to work building a basic prototype.

Game mechanics

So how will this game work? The goal is that the Learner will be asked questions at random periods. In addition to time duration, the length of the snake will increase if the Learner gets the answer incorrect, and will shorten if they correctly answer the question. We will add further gamification by enabling Learners to build streaks, both by answering questions correctly and also by completing the training.

How will questions be added?

With the prototype in place, the next stage is to build a way for an instructor or teacher to quickly and easily create relevant question banks. These will give significant freedom to create simple content aligned to what people either need to learn, or are currently learning. We’ll likely be prototyping this in Articulate 360’s Storyline and will post about this next step soon.

Will it be accessible?

Ensuring accessibility is one of our core goals, and we have a plan for releasing this game in an accessible way. No spoiler about how this will work in this blog, but do let us know if you would like to receive content from us to stay up-to-date.

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You can follow us on LinkedIn for regular updates and get in touch by email - team@konnektis.com, phone - +44 (0)330 043 0096, or with the Contact Form below if you would like to speak to one of the team.