Georgia Aquarium: Vet Adventure

Learn the stories of three seals, identify and treat their illnesses

Georgia Aquarium

Objectives:

  • Tell the story of 3 seals rescued by the aquarium
  • Teach players how a seal could be rescued

The art and design were done by the company that contracted us, Boston Productions. They provide us with graphics, and wireframes for a general flow (essentially a storyboard). We handle programming and graphics implementation. Design, in this case, is not as extensive as something you might see in a game design document. Specifics for mechanics are not well defined, and often the programmer decides what feels and plays appropriately to the interactive.

I often like to think of these sorts of interactives as games, where the whole game is a tutorial. Play sessions are very short, usually under 10 minutes. Both of these enforce the idea that simplicity in mechanics is key. Introductions to mechanics are often accompanied by text, but no one reads text and some players (kids!) can’t. “Show, don’t tell”

Here’s an example of one such mechanic, scissors:

We discussed having a secondary interaction, something like tapping to make the scissors cut, but decided against it. Since the user spends maybe 10 seconds with this mechanic, there’s just no need to make it any more complicated; using scissors in this fashion is enough to convey the point.


This is the first museum project Petricore worked on!