NoorQuest

Inspiration

In recent years, fewer children are engaging with faith-based education in a meaningful way. Specifically, in Islam one of the main ways children are taught the principles and values of the religion are through Sunday School sessions that usually range 3-4 hours once a week. With the newer generations raised on interactive digital platforms, they often struggle with holding an attention span for the duration of the session. As someone with nieces and nephews currently starting Sunday school, a common phrase I hear every weekend is the dreadful whining over the idea of needing to sit in a classroom on their day off from traditional school. This constant household argument inspired our idea of reimagining faith education through an interactive storytelling and visual experience.

What it does

NoorQuest, a cinematic, story-driven game that puts an end to the dread of Sunday school and excites kids to learn about Islam. NoorQuest invites players to experience moral and spiritual lessons through exploration and emotion as they follow Noor, our mascot who is a glowing bird of light, and guides the children across 7 symbolic environments inspired by Prophets stories. NoorQuest combines animation, exploration, and spirituality and rekindles curiosity to learn more about the religion. The flow of our game is designed to have players journey though 7 evolving environments from the Garden, Ark, Fire, Desert, City, Bridge, and Jannah, each one being inspired by a Prophet’s story and centering critical themes in islam like patience, mercy and perseverance. Another feature is the companion Noor, a luminous bird symbolizing divine guidance, and leads the player through emotional decision-making moments that reveal lessons in Islam such as choosing between a decision that could lower their “Iman” meter or higher it and reward them with “good deed” stars which they can later use to unlock higher levels and accessories to their avatar. The game’s whimsical nature, using an ambient sound design and hopeful, bright colors create an emotionally grounding experience that is accessible across different cultures. Each level is specifically designed to be completed in around 10-15 minutes which offers short and meaningful bursts of reflection through discovery and not instruction. Overall, these features help children reconnect with them in a medium they already love.

How we built it

Although we have presented this idea as a pitch, we would play to build NoorQuest on Unity for scene animation and C# scripting to handle interactive gameplay and seamless transitions. Procreate and Adobe Illustrator would be used to design characters, environments, and color palettes with soft pastel and depth effects. Figma would be used to plan UI wireframes and storyboard the seven-scene progression. The narrative system would use Scriptable Objects in Unity to manage dialogue, level objectives, and progression triggers. For sound we would integrate FMOD Studio for adaptive music and environmental cues. The mobile app would be targeted for iOS and Android so it would be optimized for cinematic portrait mode.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge we faced was ensuring NoorQuest maintained its spiritual authenticity while not feeling overstimulating. We didn’t want the game to be competitive where students felt like they had to rush through levels without learning anything. We wanted it to be a reflective experience, rather than a points-based system that distracts from the islamic values at heart. Finding that balance between engagement and reverence required careful design decisions such as focusing on exploration, discovery, and emotional storytelling. Another challenge we faced was ensuring religious and historical accuracy because we didn’t want the info to be mistaken if we had a slight confusion in our interpretations but rather have authentic Islamic teachings, so we consulted multiple sources to ensure our knowledge was correct. Finally, we faced the challenge of keeping students engaged while introducing complex, layered lessons of faith. Since Islamic teachings can span deep ideas, we worked to simplify these through interactive storytelling allowing children to absorb knowledge through play instead of direct instruction.

What's next for NoorQuest

We plan to improve upon this project by expanding NoorQuest to incorporate more Prophets stories, from 7 to 25, one level for each Prophet with guided narration and an optional dashboard to allow educators to deploy lessons on it. Our roadmap to expand it includes adding voice-acted cutscenes and language localization, interactive journal reflections where players can write about their thoughts at the end of each story, partnerships with educational nonprofits to integrate NoorQuest into weekend and after-school programs. We would also add a “journey mode” that introduces multiplayer exploration so children all over the world can play together. Our vision for the app is to bridge technology and spirituality, making faith more meaningful.

Built With

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