MushWhom? Educational Edition Now Available!

MushWhom? is a clever, colorful, challenging game designed to teach players about critical thinking. 

It is one of the winning games from our 2023 game design challenge which focused on the topic of critical thinking. It was also the winner of Best Design at DreamHack Atlanta in December 2023! The game offers a tutorial followed by two levels through which players are tested on their observation and deduction skills. 

If you do decide to play it we highly recommend downloading it (Windows / Linux) rather than playing in your browser.

A Problem with Critical Thinking

The challenge we faced with the original version of the game was -- although the game is very entertaining and very well designed -- the topic of critical thinking is tough to teach. 

This is especially true if you're trying to teach it via a short video game (around 30 minutes). We had to deal with this problem last year with all of the Finalist games about critical thinking. The judges loved many things about the games. However, what the judges did not love was that none of the games met all of the criteria they wanted to see covered about critical thinking. 

To be fair, critical thinking means different things to different people. And educators are especially focused on specific aspects about critical thinking. If they don't see those aspects addressed then they are understandably frustrated.

What is Critical Thinking?

As we do with all of our game design challenges, we collect a variety of resources to help game designers & their teams learn more about the topic. In January 2023, when we started searching for resources and doing research to get a better understanding of the topic of critical thinking -- and of educators' needs, we realized that this would be a tough topic to tackle through video games.

For one thing, there are different schools of thought about critical thinking. Generally everybody is okay with a broad definition like: "Critical thinking is the ability to analyze information objectively and make a reasoned judgement." (thoughtco.com) 

But that definition is a very broad and very high-level explanation of critical thinking; it is not necessarily very helpful when deciding how to design your critical thinking video game.

The Bigger Issue

The underlying reason many educators want critical thinking resources is that there is a strong need to prepare young people who are dealing with misinformation & disinformation on a daily basis. 

Why is that? Because: social media platforms are optimized to engage viewers regardless of the truth of the content. 

Generally, social media platforms are not as focused on making sure information is accurate as they are in making sure that users share it or respond to it. The reason is simple: they make more money if people are engaged with content (even if it is untrue).

And so: the need for critical thinking is very important. 

Our Problem

We had a problem. We have wonderful judges -- most work at universities and teach, research, or otherwise are focused on game design and development. The rest of our judges either work in violence prevention or are mental health professionals. 

For the education-focused judges there were many things they wanted to change about the critical thinking video games. And we understand that desire to get it right. But the reality is that it takes time and money if we were going to completely re-design these video games. 

As a nonprofit charity we definitely did not have the money we would need to re-design these games. And even if we did have the funds, we did not have the time. We have been getting requests about critical thinking games for several years and are just as concerned as educators about the need for strong critical thinkers. 

The big tech companies are too focused on profits and too little focused on the impact their platforms have on young viewers (or older viewers for that matter). And we don't see that improving any time soon. So, we needed to find a quick and inexpensive way to utilize these very clever games while still providing a free critical thinking resource that teachers could use in the classroom.

Our Solution

And so we decided to try something very different, at least for us: reframe the games through a narrator.

MushWhom? Educational Edition is the first time we've tried this. 

When a player launches the game they will first receive an introduction about the topic of critical thinking presented by an engaging NPC narrator. This narrator provides some background information about critical thinking as well as some helpful tips intended to foster a critical-thinking mindset. After this brief discussion about critical thinking the player then proceeds to play the game of MushWhom?. 

After finishing MushWhom?, the player returns to the NPC narrator who then summarizes what was learned. This narrator also offers reminders about key aspects of critical thinking and asks the player to recall when they were applying these concepts during gameplay. Importantly, they also make it clear that merely playing the game does not make one a critical thinker. There is a lot more to learn ... and this is just one step on that journey.

In addition to the Introduction and Afterword offered by the narrator, we also hired an educational consultant to develop classroom resources. They created a standards-aligned lesson plan and a slide deck designed for use with the game. These free resources are available to access via QR codes in the game.

The plan is that the narrator provides enough context and the lesson plans provide enough background that this charming game will be useful enough for teachers that they will want to use this free resource in their classrooms. 

Our Hope

We really hope that this approach to educating students about critical thinking through gameplay is successful. 

This approach allowed us to take a wonderful puzzle game, which already features several elements helpful for critical thinking, and then provide additional, and important context, at a relatively low cost. We did not have to make significant changes to the game but instead were able to reframe the gaming experience through this NPC narrator.

We have already begun this same process on a second critical thinking game. We hope to release the re-contextualized version of that game within a month or two. 

And if all goes well ... we still have three more critical thinking games that we might bundle together, or otherwise experiment with, in order to offer more critical thinking games that teachers can use in the classroom. Or young people might decide to play them on their own. (This is one of the main reasons we make our games available for free.) 

Our hope is that this new approach (at least it's new to us!) will allow us to release some of our games that need some re-work before we are comfortable publishing them. And we might even re-frame some games we'd previously published.

Stay tuned. And please share your thoughts on our strategy. We love these games and remain hopeful that this approach will improve their reach and their effectiveness.

The Gaming Against Violence program
(presented by Jennifer Ann's Group)