Role: Co-creator
Overview
Cone-scious is an educational game developed with Diana Milena Galindo Clavijo for the Microsoft MakeCode Game Jam 2022. Responding to the theme of equity in digital spaces, the project focuses on colour vision deficiency as an often overlooked accessibility issue, using game design to raise awareness and encourage empathy by allowing players to experience different ways of seeing. The game can be accessed via the QR code provided.
Problem / Purpose
The game aimed to serve as a learning journey where players could actively engage with different types of colour vision and understand their causes. This led to a structure of three mini-games, each representing a specific type of colour blindness—deuteranopia, protanopia, and tritanopia—framed around the concept of missing cone cells.
Process
I led the ideation and concept development of the project, and developed Game 2 and 3, focusing on how gameplay could communicate both perception and underlying biology. The most Challenging part of my role was implementing the colour systems across the experience. The game uses five distinct colour systems, with each system designed not only to simulate perception, but also to ensure that players with colour blindness could play the game comfortably, while others could experience a shifted perspective of the same world.
The gameplay is structured as a progression-based learning experience, where players collect missing cone cells to restore vision, directly linking interaction to the scientific concept. This design was informed by research into how colour vision works, translating biological mechanisms into intuitive game objectives.
Outcome
The final outcome is a triptych of games that demonstrate how gamified learning can communicate accessibility topics in an engaging and experiential way. Our game won 3rd place in the Game Jam.