When we first heard of this challenge, we weren't aware of what a lava tube is and thought it was the same for most people. So we decided to make an accessible game, easy to play, but efficient in transmitting information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qWtEqJR3bM

The Game

You, the main character, a.k.a. Robbie the robot, have landed on Mars and have to collect information and resources to help humans colonize the planet. This game has two stages :

• Firstly, you're on Mars' ground, being subject to radiation, dust storms and frostiness. Due to these threats, you are constantly losing life, so you must hurry to find a shelter! And what can be a better shelter on Mars than pre-existing lava tubes, already deep underground? On a map generated with real pictures of Mars' surface, try to find access to lava tubes by drilling surface incongruities, like noticeables holes and bumps. If this place really is an entrance, then CONGRATULATIONS! You're going into stage two!

• When you're underground, you'll have to collect resources in order to stay alive, to repair yourself, to finally find suitable places for humans to live. Avoid encounters with bearstronauts, swimming in lava, and these lava tubes could totally embrace human life! Once you've completely discovered all resources in a level of a zone, you get an upgrade allowing you explore another zone on Martian surface to find an another entrance, while flag these entrances "fully explored"!

The Goal

But beyond gaming, people will learn simple but useful things about Mars exploration. You and also the NASA. "How could it be?" we heard you say. Well...

• While collecting resources, explanations will appear to explicit how these resources would be used for, the possibilities for using the lava tubes in order to create a fully functional human society and the threats people will have to fight and how.

• While searching for entrances, the game will collect the real coordinates of the incongruities picked by people, and if they are picked by an enough amount of people, this data will be sent to NASA, which will have the opportunity to verify these information. It's named crowd-sourcing, and it's using the most powerful computer in the world : the human brain.

It's simple, it's competitive - with a score to compare with your peers, and also helping real research for possible human colonization.

Project Information

Resources