Phytofighter

URL: http://phytofighter.com/

Tech: CreateJS + Typescript

Code: Closed source

Background:

This was created with a small team during my time in the Theoretical and Computational Epidemiology research group at Uni. Cambridge. We produced this game over the course of a few weeks for a London Science Museum Lates event.

The aim was to produce a quick game that would educate the public on some key features of plant epidemiology. We ran the game on a few Microsoft Surface tablets and had members of our lab to walk people through the levels, and answer questions.

The key takeaways from the game were meant to be,

• In practice, plant epidemiology is a game of balancing disease control and profit
• There is a great deal of uncertainty to deal with in disease control
• Cryptic infection drives a lot of our disease control decisions

Stomata!

Tech: Java Swing

Code: https://github.com/elderfd/Stomata

Background:

This game was produced for a demonstration at the Cambridge Science Festival 2015. In this case I produced all of the code, and my colleague supplied the art.

The game plays as a sort of "whack a mole". You control the open / closed state of a number of pores (stomata) on a leaf. There is a day-night cycle and you gain points whenever the stomata are open during sunlight, representing their key importance to photosynthesis. However pathogens are also raining from the sky, and you lose points if they hit open stomata - representing the fact that these pores are a key point of infection.

The game was designed to be very quick to play, and to be accessible for small children.