Snake Combinator: A Game-based learning platform, derived from the classic snake game concept

Abstract

The concept of an educational game is not new, and lots of mediocre games exits on the Internet. The ultimate achievement would be to change this. The goal of this project was to do implement Snake Combinator and conduct user experiments to evaluate if the concept had educational value. To achieve this, research on how a snake game could support a whole class of students playing simultaneously has been carried out. This includes what technology and architecture could best serve the purpose, but also how the game should behave.To understand how an educational multiplayer snake game should behave I looked at the history of educational games, did research on the theory behind educational games and did a case study on the state of the art on similar free games available on the Internet. Based on node.js and WebScoket technology Snake Combinator was fully implemented. Finally I conducted user experiments with a user group to validate if the technology, architecture, user interface and educational game elements had served its purpose.The user experiments proved that Snake Combinator has educational value. It also revealed that the concept of providing users the ability to add in-game content together with multiplayer experience makes for a fun and engaging game.