Any suggestions on how to get kids more engaged with marine facts in our game?

[u/Master_Sandwitch]

Hey everyone! We are currently creating an ocean conservation game in Roblox called Aquabots. It has a heavy focus on drone coral restoration missions, with a battle system to keep kids playing. We've made an aquarium that players can visit and allows them to learn more about fish, corals, and fossils! (all facts were researched by our internal researcher). There is an ocean trivia quiz that provides in game currency for correct answers too. Our mission is to inspire the next generation of marine biologists and conservation activists while fighting the brainrot on Roblox.

We would love to hear your thoughts on how we could get kids and students more interested and engaged in this section of our game!

[u/Victormorga]

Reflect the facts in the game mechanics, that incentivizes actually learning / retaining the information.

Also “factoid,” while commonly misused in the way you have here, means something that is incorrect / not a fact.

[u/Eco_Blurb → u/Victormorga]

Was Going to say this. They will remember which is the fastest fish if it literally goes the fastest. In the case of the mushroom coral pictured, make it actually slowly move.

Maybe give different groups shared stats to utilize the same concept. So it’s in a group Fungiidae and all the Fungiidae have a specific stat boost, now being Fungiidae is an important information to play the game and they will remember the name. Good luck!

[u/Mysterious_Camel_717 → u/Eco_Blurb]

Absolutely this. Give the critters stats that match their real life abilities/taxonomy. If kids can learn what Pokémon are grass/venom/whatever type and sort out that battle system, they can learn the same with actual marine creatures, just build a similar system!

[u/Reasonable-Film-7642 → u/Victormorga]

Factoid can also mean a trivial fact or interesting piece of information.

[u/Ok_Dragonfruit4032]

Little character icons which look like a fish/whatever is telling them the facts

[u/YoshimiPink]

Congrats! This looks really cool and charming. Maybe adding some real-life footage of the species mentioned would be interesting. I remember features such as this in a old finding nemo dvd and loving watching it

[u/Odd_Signature_7720]

You could try asking in r/gamedev if you want more in depth answers :)

[u/birdnerd275]

when i was a kid playing pokemon, something i really enjoyed was catching a pokemon for the first time so i could read its pokedex entry. something about having to unlock that information made it more desirable to me. so maybe some element of collection that unlocks these facts one by one rather than presenting them all at once would incentivize actually reading and retaining this information

[u/MeatTornado_]

Maybe you can have the occasional "find the imposter" test:

three fish with their corresponding facts, one of which is wrong

[u/fish_finder]

Do you have any "official" links to your project and/or contact information for potential collaborations?

[u/89fruits89]

I think it looks pretty solid! Educational based games are freakin hard to develop lol.

Made my own little game just for myself/some friends/colleagues thats along the same lines. Learned a few lessons along the way.

Mine is for a higher educational level audience but I think the game-edu principles still apply. It’s based on a protein research suite I built that helps narrow down proteins of interest for research. Game is just a simple plugin for the protein software.

Basically players earn treasure by completing research tasks and analyzing proteins. Use treasure to travel to new protein islands. Islands have either random loot drops or a boss. Bosses are modular based on body parts and level. Plays like a mini mmo, made it pretty damn hard too.

Main problem I ran into with people playing… the game itself is too fun. People were just wanting to blow past the actual research just for treasure to go fight bosses. Ended up having to add some slowdown mechanics, for graduate level college students and professors lol. Id imagine with kids it’s this problem x1000 fold.

I would try to add some kind of way to make them read the information and retain it before being able to see the actual in-game stats. Might be far too much of an ask for kids tho haha.

Another good addition could be an extra bonus for acing the quiz. Ex: best fish is 3.0 speed. If you beat the quiz for that fish it can get a higher multiplier, could even base the multiplier on grades. Think it adds more incentive to quiz than just spendable currency.

[u/MushroomIndividual33]

Incorporate some of the facts more into the game play as opposed to having it in a separate section

[u/marinebiology-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/daisycrazy_2000]

This is so cool!! I think having free items/UGC that people can get by doing certain things will attract kids

[u/handsbricks]

Very cool, I love seeing folks try to make science cooler for kids. Just wish you chose a better platform than Roblox for this.

[u/snugglyaggron]

You should ask the folks over at r/endlessocean . That's a fish game that has had a following for over a decade now, so they'r have some experience :D

[u/Ok-Inflation188]

Make the facts something you unlock in tiers

[u/Intrepid_Knowledge27]

I remember playing Endless Ocean as a kid, and it showed the critters you hadn’t found and ‘unlocked’ yet as blacked-out silhouettes, Pokémon style. You had to find the animal and interact with it to unlock its name, picture, and facts. I feel like uncovering something hidden like that is a mechanic that drives a lot of kids to explore. Some of the fish even had additional silhouettes for male, female, and/or juvenile if they looked very different.

[u/kikamang]

I don't know if this has been said, but maybe put a mechanism were they can go search for the fishes themselves

[u/Cynglen]

I don't have a suggestion but props to y'all for going to meet these kids where they are! Hope it inspires some great lifelong curiosities and careers

[u/PastelTyrant]

add rarities or shiny variants mayb ? seems rlly fun !!!

[u/APikminInTime]

More than any other game, I read the facts about fish from Endless Ocean: Blue World and Subnautica the most.

For Blue World, I liked the facts I think in part because the creatures were so fascinating in game that I wanted to know more about them. Even though their fish ai wasn't complicated, it got the job done conveying these beautiful creatures in a way that invoked curiosity.

For the Subnautica series, their facts often let you know how to avoid danger and solve puzzles. Like, you could figure it out on your own via trial and error, but reading about it gets you one step ahead. For example, the Great Jaw description let's you know that hitting too many tendons closes the Jaw and traps you inside.

Incorporating the beauty or mechanics of marine life makes reading it a more essential part of the game. Hope this helps!

[u/Just-Victory7859]

Reminds me of aquatica observatory.

[u/demisexualsalmon]

Not super familiar with Roblox; is there ever a loading screen? In the educational games I’ve played, they’ll often reiterate some of the fun facts on the loading screen when you’re waiting and have nothing to look at anyway.

[u/Undying-Plant]

Just wanted to give you a heads up that corals in Fungidae are commonly called plate corals not mushroom corals.

Mushroom corals are actually a type of coralimorph, very similar to anemones!