Inspiration
We all have experience in Python and we are also history enthusiasts. There are not many gamified learning platforms for history, so we decided to create a project that addresses this need using our knowledge of Python and history.
What it does
American Odyssey is an educational history game combined with tower defense. Students answer questions pertaining to four different periods in American history: Colonial/American Revolution, Civil War, World War I, and World War II in a quiz similar to Kahoot and Blooket. If they answer a question correctly, they get to place one item in the tower defense game to defend their tower against enemies. A correct answer also earns them coins, which they can use in the shop to purchase turrets.
Many young students don’t learn history well since it can come across as boring to them. However, with this game: American Odyssey, players can test their knowledge and learn new skills in a fun, gamified way. The tower defense aspect of this game also teaches children strategy as they must place their towers in such a way that they can defend against enemy attacks.
How we built it
The project was coded in Python using Pygame, and Piskel was used to create the sprites for the tower defense gameplay.
Challenges we ran into
The main challenge we faced was compiling our code and dealing with technical difficulties. We used multiple editors for this project (VS Code, Replit, etc.) and had to compile our code in GitHub, which was challenging.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We successfully created original sprites and the framework for a tower defense learning game.
What we learned
We learned how to integrate these programming languages with sprites, images, and other resources. Most importantly, we learned how to work as a team of developers, using tools like GitHub to share our code.
What's next for American Odyssey
Next steps include implementing American Odyssey in learning platforms and schools; we can widely distribute it in the education community. Moreover, we can expand the learning content and integrate learning analytics to improve the project.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.