Our project is an educational platform game that focuses on teaching kids and teens, maybe even adults (why not?) about exoplanets, environmental responsibility and space.

The game is about a young fisher that, in one of his adventures, catches a different kind of fish: a magical rock – a fragment of an old meteorite. Said fragment holds magical powers capable of transporting oneself to a different place, where its ruler is the G-type Star Kepler90, known as Kevin, the King. The ruler is the one that arranged the planets the way they are currently orbiting, putting everything meticulously into place. The fisherman, by arriving in Kevin, the King’s system, disturbs the balance and causes different kind of problems to each exoplanet; now, he needs to help the Kepler90s solving their quests to stabilize them again.

For that, the fisherman runs around each exoplanet trying to find the items that solve the quest, all while learning more about it. We have selected a total of four characters: Kevin, The King representing Kepler90; Frank, the Mysterious Dreamer representing Kepler90-f; George, the Erratic Guardian as Kepler90-g; and Iana, the Brave Adventuress, Kepler90-i.

This a game that teaches about environmental responsibility and how human actions can affect the environment – be it for good or bad. This builds the sense of liability one must have and the awareness that every action has its corresponding reaction, even if it is a small one; afterall, a single spark can ignite a huge fire and destroy hectares of vegetation. Whilst running around the exoplanet’s terrain, the fisherman will encounter obstacles that harmed the ecosystem, as a result of external actions.

An this is only one facet of it! The exoplanets have quite the protagonism in our game – each phase is a different quest for an exoplanet in despair. While you run through its map, you’ll learn new things about it, such as its size, formation, curiosities, etc.

Therefore, we hope that we can nurture the passion for space in young ones, while perpetrating the culture of learning new things and always seeking for knowledge!

For tools, we used Google Docs to organize the documents and writing the description, the pitch, summary and general ideas for the project; Google Meet and Discord for communicating and deciding our steps; We also used Discord to coordinate our tasks and progress; Regarding AIs, FreePik, OpenArt OpenAi, Pixai, Design.com and ChatGPT; Piskel app and Pixel Studio to do pixel art of our characters and backgrounds; C# and Unity for coding the game. We used Craftpix and Unity Asset Store for a few assets in our demo.

For more details, such as character's personalities and dialogues, please check the Reference "More Details" below.

2024 NASA Space Apps Challenge

Yet in the Sky