Emotion Awakeners

Our initial concept aimed to create an interactive board game that helped K-5 students explore social-emotional learning (SEL) by unlocking and experiencing a range of emotions—joy, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. The game design initially focused on performing actions to convey emotions physically and verbally, allowing players to immerse themselves in these emotions actively. However, transitioning the game to a digital format in Twine presented challenges, especially in maintaining the interactivity and performative elements that were central to our vision.

One key challenge was adjusting the interaction style for a digital game. The verb “perform” was pivotal in the board game version, where players could express emotions or perform actions in response to scenarios. In Twine, we needed to adapt this through storytelling choices that guide players through emotional responses, though it lacks the depth of live interaction. Additionally, evaluating the learning outcomes became complex, as we initially planned for player actions and reflections to demonstrate emotional understanding. In a digital format, observing these actions directly is limited, requiring creative workarounds.

Given more time, we would integrate a third-party extension to track gameplay metrics, like the number of attempts it takes players to achieve specific emotional insights or win conditions. This data would allow us to evaluate learning progression by monitoring player decision patterns and improvements over time, helping us gauge their SEL development through gameplay.

Each team member contributed distinctively:

Narrative Design by Anny: Focused on creating meaningful scenario cards and story choices to elicit specific emotions.

Programming in Twine by Mengyao: Adapted our original concepts to fit a digital storytelling format, maintaining coherence and emotional engagement.

Game Mechanics and Evaluation Design by Vera: Crafted the game’s core mechanics and designed methods to evaluate learning progress in a digital format.

Unresolved Issues or Bugs

While the game is fully playable, we noticed that some emotion choices could use deeper branching paths for increased immersion. Limited time prevented us from implementing all the intended branching choices and responses, so some scenarios feel more linear than we had hoped. In future iterations, refining these paths will add depth to the players' emotional journeys, offering a more dynamic learning experience.