Gameplay concept

I took some hours thinking about how to incorporate the information in a nice gameplay and I think that a tower defence style is a good take. It also makes it easier to do the graphics when the parts are structured in a grid.

This here on the right is the gamearea. Here you will be able to place neurons, evolve stemcells to neurons or glialcells, move parts and build your brain to defend against bacteria, virus and other threats. There will also be some kind of menu to make choises. Choises like buying nano flamethrowers or nutrition.

In the middle we have stemcells and nutrition that is very yummy for bacteria. To defend them we can evolve some of the stemcells to become nervecells. A part of a nervecell can become a "Lamellar corpuscle" and register touch, in this picture above the virus sets of a signal wich travels through another nervecell to a nano flamethrower wich in turn kills the virus wich then becomes nutrition which can be used to make more stemcells. Like in every tower defence game the enemies becomes harder so you have to be smart when building to defeat all the "waves" or enemies that can march at you.

I wanted to incorporate the fun in making big neural networks and the chemical processes so I need two different perspectives. Therefore the possibility to zoom in and work on individual synapses, axons and other parts may be a good solution.

If you choose to zoom in on a synapse (pic. on the left,) you can solve problems if some virus has destroyed a synapse or if there is garbage there. Hopefully there will be a possibility to place more neurotransmitters (the purple squares) or place more or less receptors (green).

I want to incorporate the "Practice principle" that James Paul Gee has found is a great advantage of video games. It's the 12:th principle in his book "What video games have to teach about learning and literacy" (absolutely an amazing book). The principle is about how players get allot of practice in certain tasks where the practice is not boring. If the player gets to place neurotransmitters, receptors and help myelinate the axons alot, the player will hopefully finish the game with knowledge that stays.



I also have alot of other ideas but had no time to put them in pictures.

I think that i'm going to send some emails to people that have done some tower defence games and see if they want to cooperate. I don't really seek any money, I want this game to be made because I see the profit as knowledge to humanity. I think that if we educate kids and help them to keep their curiosity alive and thriving, along with a belief that cooperation is key to survival, we all will get better lives.

If you have made any tower defence game before, please feel free to contact me and we can see if we can team up!

Here is a picture of a Lamellar corpuscle that is one of the touch-registering nervecells (also found in the top picture):

Lamellar corpuscle