Cosmic Communicators Game

In the Spring Semester of 2020, Tom Smalling, owner of Smalling Studios, took the EME 6614 – Instructional Game Design course as part of UCF’s Instructional Design Master’s degree.

Working with a team of students, we developed an instructional game concept document throughout the semester. Our game, named Cosmic Communicators, is to help non-verbal students find their voice. Set in a far-away galaxy with colorful characters, the Galaxy Master is on a mission to rid the universe of communication. As a Cosmic Communicator, the player must race around the galaxy to defeat the Galaxy Master. With the help of the guide, Nova, the players move through the galaxy collecting coins.

We had five major milestones in the project, including building a pitch document, defining the story, describing the gameplay, creating rules, and developing prototypes. The final instructional game concept document is below. I volunteered my kids for the paper prototype as part of the project. And to help demonstrate how the game would look visually, I developed a prototype using Adobe XD.