zkturman/undergrove

Game to educate and protect players against dark/unethical video game design.

Under Grove

Play Game

UnderGroveJuneUpdate.mp4

Premise

Under Grove is a procedurally generated, 2D adventure game. The purpose of this game is to educate players on unethical game design to better protect them from potentially manipulative practice. Within the game, players can add unethical design patterns to the gameplay and experiment with their effects. These settings can be shared with others to add a small social aspect to the game.

News

Version 0.6 has been released via WebGL as of 17 July 2022!

• Updated the main menu to remove focus on educational elements
• Added a Settings option to the main menu that is currently under construction. Users can change lighting and sound here.
• Removed default Dark Design patterns. The option is still available from the Learn menu.
• Neighbouring rooms are visible when playing the game. This allows easier navigation of Under Grove.
• Fog surrounds the player view. Summoning fireflies causes the fog to retreat and improves the players view. Fireflies can be summoned with the Q key!

An upcoming v0.7 is forthcoming, which will feature enemy AI and additional enemies.

Background

The project was developed as part of my MSc dissertation and was used in an experiment to test how well the game educates people on these design patterns. Overall, players did learn more about these design patterns (although the increase was not statistically significant).

From 18-27 August, changes were made to the game on a daily basis. The current version of the game is v0.6.

A history of changes can be viewed in the Change Log.