Playtesting PlanetMania

PlanetMania, a mobile game from the Maryland Science Center, is designed to be played by preteen visitors in the Life Beyond Earth exhibit. The card-based gameplay expands upon exhibit content and encourages interaction with the physical exhibit. Through extensive paper prototyping and iterative development, the project team revised and simplified the game content and interactivity, striving for intuitive game rules, age-appropriate scientific content, and engaging game play and learning outcomes — all in a museum environment where players have plenty of distractions.