Web-Based Game for Psyche – Around Psyche in 448 (Earth) Days

INSTITUTION

University of Arkansas (UArk)

CLASS

Iridium Class (2024 – 2025)

STUDENT TEAM

ACADEMIC GUIDANCE

Dr. Matthew Patitz (Professor)

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Our goal in creating this game was to give players — primarily young students — an opportunity to learn about the Psyche mission in a truly fun way that does not compromise on educational value. To this end, our game focuses directly on the mission’s four orbital scanning stages, abstractly representing each through separate minigames that contain real scientific facts relevant to the mission. Level 1 (Characterization) involves aiming a camera to explore different features on Psyche, level 2 (Topography) is a tile-swapping image puzzle based on a topographic map of Psyche, level 3 (Gravity Science) requires the player to dispel interference noise waves to reveal measurements of Psyche’s gravity, and level 4 (Elemental Mapping) consists of a match-3 game in which the player collects elements hypothesized to be found on Psyche. While our game contains fictional elements such as a star character that guides the player and also oversimplifies the orbiter’s processes for the sake of simple gameplay, we hope that this game will allow people to learn more about the basic concepts of the mission and inspire further learning beyond the game. We hope you enjoy playing our game and will stay tuned for the orbiter’s arrival to Psyche in 2029!

Play the Game!

This work was created in partial fulfillment of the University of Arkansas Capstone Course “CSCE 45601“. The work is a result of the Psyche Student Collaborations component of NASA’s Psyche Mission (https://psyche.ssl.berkeley.edu). “Psyche: A Journey to a Metal World” [Contract number NNM16AA09C] is part of the NASA Discovery Program mission to solar system targets. Trade names and trademarks of ASU and NASA are used in this work for identification only. Their usage does not constitute an official endorsement, either expressed or implied, by Arizona State University or National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of ASU or NASA.