Cerebrum

PITCH

Cerebrum is a multi-platform educational game that encourages players, age 8 to 16 years old, to learn about the human brain, avoid risky activities, share symptoms from injury, and act as soon as possible to stop further damages. The ship is a metaphor for the skull, the onboard artificial intelligence for the brain, and being struck by an asteroid as the possibly damaging external collision.

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NARRATIVE
You wake up from your cryotube inside the medical bay of a spaceship. The ship has been hit by a meteor and is going to crash into Earth upon re-landing. You’ve been instructed by a malfunctioning AI called BRAIN that she needs your help to repair the ship before we all die! As you navigate through this breaking ship, you find rooms that need repair. The repairs come in all shapes and sizes as challenges/mini games. Every time you solve a problem, the AI BRAIN is healed and the ship automatically fixes itself! Wow! Okay, once the entire ship is repaired, you make your way to the control room to help the ship land! You have two options. After all this work and time, we are still in a time crunch to get down to Earth and deliver our special cargo to billions as fast possible... do you land now knowing that the AI still needs another few days to heal completely OR do you wait a few days, orbit the Earth and land later? This final choice will determine your future!

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GAMEPLAY OVERVIEW
Players go on a mission to heal the ‘brain’ (Ships AI system). The game starts by choosing a character themed after famous characters who also have unique special buffs. They start in the medical room, in which they get a quick optional visual introduction of how the brain works and how concussion can affects their brain’s functionality. Then they go on to heal different parts of the brain (fix different parts of AI system) by completing mini-games in different parts of the ship. We use a health bar to regulate exertion and penalyze/debuff the players that push themselves too hard or too fast with unique symptoms derived from their character selection. The symptom (or debuff) doesn’t go away unless they sit, rest or return to the medical room. If they keep pushing themselves, don’t care about the debuffs, and hit a predetermined yet randomized and individual number of maximum debuffs between 2-10 times, the symptom stays with them for the rest of game. After they complete the mini-games they can try to beat the obby and get to the ‘big final decision’. Top teams will make their names into the leaderboard.

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LINK TO FULL GAME DESIGN DOCUMENT

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CONCUSSION LEGACY FOUNDATION CANADA

In partnership with the Concussion Legacy Foundation & Concussion Legacy Foundation Canada. The intention of our Cerebrum game is to efficiently translate and exchange the ever-growing body of knowledge regarding how the brain works, how concussions disrupt proper brain function, and how to recognize concussion symptoms. Our research and operations teams across the globe are keen to work with Roblox to directly connect with the children that urgently need to hear these safety messages, in a way that has never before been accomplished. We are in contact with research teams at Boston University, Oxford, CAMH, University of Toronto, McGill, Temple, Clemson, and USF. All have expressed a strong interest in studying the effectiveness of our knowledge exchange and translation. More information on CLF and CLFC can be found here.