BioGame

Introduction

The BioGame for Android has been developed as part of the BareCillus outreach scheme. The aim is to provide a fun and informative means for young biologists to become interested in Synthetic Biology and it's various applications. The game poses the user with various challenges, from simply keeping the bacteria alive, to solving problems using BioBricks, and they must complete these challenges to progress through the game and keep their bacteria healthy. This page has been created to both document the development and provide a guide to playing the game.

Concept

The game was first conceived as part of our ethical considerations, to demonstrate the sharing aspect of iGEM by allowing users to utilise any BioBrick from the registry (that has been programmed into the game). The idea is that mini games will require certain BioBricks in order to be completed, involving aspects of research and problem solving from the user.

The game has been developed in Java with [http://libgdx.badlogicgames.com/ LIBGdx]. This is because of the documentation available on it, the ease at which games can be developed and the consistent structure it provides with standard gaming development. It also makes it exceptionally easy to port games between Android, PC and HTML, giving the possibility for cross-platform integration of cloud-based save games in the future.

The game has been developed with an open source license. With an API and all source code available for download and adaption. The documentation for the game can be found on this page and teams/users are encouraged to use it a basis for their own projects/purposes.