Cryptaris
( 09 / 12 )
( Brief )
Motivated young people, with all the information in the world at their fingertips, have already seen and created so much before even leaving high school these days. They are hyper-capable but also hyper-finicky with their time, so if you try to intrigue them with a challenge, make sure it’s very intriguing, and very challenging. The US ARMY wanted to micro-target this talent pool and promote their STEM based careers. So we created Cryptaris, a web-based, STEM focused simulated mission where users must use fast thinking, creative problem solving and high level skills to succeed. With help from experts in relevant fields we conceived of challenges ranging from kinematics, to medicine, to programming and more. The result was an award winning game so challenging that less than .1% were able to finish.
( Role )
I acted as creative director and game developer on this project guiding a team of 6 developers working together to create 7 WebGL mini-games combining to form a challenging online mission. During the concepting phase I co-led the planning of the entire property, from the story and how it fits in the US ARMY universe, to conceiving of and designing games that would test relevant knowledge and skill in a concise and engaging way, to sourcing and interviewing expert consultants to vet and influence specific subject matter and game mechanics for better realism. As game developer I built 2 of the 7 games. One game tested the recruit’s spatial and structural competence as a demolitions expert in a mountainous WebGL terrain, overlaid by an invisible hand created physics environment for the explosions and projectiles to interact with. The other game challenged the recruit to problem solve through the 4th wall while trying to discover and input passcodes a “safe-guard bug” would infect the system and the only way for the recruit to combat it was to open the javascript console, track down the traveling bug in standing memory and kill it before it literally attacked and killed the code of the site.