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NuOdyssey

Wednesday, 3rd October 2018 ◆ We hear new tree knows particles (9)

NuOdyssey is a game I made for Durham University's stand at the Royal Society's Summer Exhibition. The target audience was mainly young children. It needed to be simple, fun and engaging. Through playing the game, you are supposed to learn that neutrinos exist, and perhaps learn a little bit about them. The aim wasn't to create an accurate neutrino simulator, just to introduce the idea of things called "neutrinos", and perhaps to spark some questions in the player.

We went through lots of different iterations of what the game could be like, but I think we settled on something quite moreish and fun! The game is embedded below, or you can play it fullscreen here.

The art was supplied by the art department at Durham Univeristy. I made the game using Javascript and the PIXI.js library.

As part of the group's stand, the game was presented on a couple of Raspberry Pis and projected onto big screens. Players could play next to each other and see who could get the higher score. They had lots of other cool things too, like a VR experience where you enter into the Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan. The stand was really impressive, and I was so happy to be a part of it.

I came away from the exhibition excited about areas of science and research I didn't know about before. The people we met were so excited by their fields and were so knowledgeable. We learnt a lot about a wide range of topics including: epigenetics, cutting edge cancer research, robotic prosthetic limbs, and more... I'd really like to go again next year!