What Did We Learn?

At Hyper Bio Games, we aim to create games that teach core science concepts in extremely fun ways. We avoid elements that will make our game constantly teach and lose what makes a game fun, or creating games are tons of fun, but involve information that is not integrated. We absolutely do not want players to walk away wondering what the game was actually about. According to a recent focus group (i.e. my housemates) Hyper Helixes integrates "information with intriguing design."

Hyper Helixes aims to teach many advanced topics. A integral concept in Hyper Helixes is the structure and properties of amino acids. The structures of the amino acids are clearly displayed on the front of the card along with two other commonly tested bits of information: the three letter abbreviation and
the one letter abbreviation for amino acids. Also on the front of the amino acid cards is a colorful design which indicates the category of the amino acid. The  background colors, red, orange, yellow and teal correspond to the characteristics of  the amino acids, acidic, basic, nonpolar and polar.

The chymotrypsin and trypsin cards teach the importance of proteases specificity. In Hyper Helixes, you gain points by collecting amino acid cards
by "cutting" a stack with a protease. The two proteases in Hyper Helixes are chymotrypsin and trypsin. Chymotrypsin cuts after aromatic amino acids and in Hyper Helixes these amino acid cards are indicated by a purple boarder to match the background of the chymotrypsin card. Trypsin cuts after the basic amino acids arginine and lysine which, just as with chymotrypsin, have borders that match the green trypsin card.                                                                                                                                                                                    The point system is designed to teache the common structure of collagen. When a player collects a stack of amino acid cards with a sequence of glycine-proline-hydroxyproline, which is the most common amino acid sequence in collagen, the player is rewarded with 5 extra points. If a player collects three stacks of amino acid cards, the player has collected three alpha chains which make up the collagen helix and all of the players positive points are tripled.

All of the above points were highly emphasized in my required biochemistry class.In the class, questions around these topics were worth over thirty points on exams (talk about collage readiness).

 Through playing Hyper Helixes, I hope that children of all ages will not only learn biology and chemistry but will develop a love for science at and a curiosity which inspires them to study and discover more about the world around them.