Starquake Academy

Starquake Academy is a science adventure game set in the year 2137. You take the role of Alex, a seemingly average teenager from the Midwest as she is recruited into Starquake Academy, an elite training program run by the solar system’s most powerful company. You start your training of vital knowledge needed to survive in outer space. Through your exploration of these science concept, you explore the mysteries of Starquake Corp., the resistance movement against Starquake, and your own past.

This science adventure game aims to teach science, technology, math, and engineering topics using immersive 3D animation and mini-games. Learn by exploring in this self-paced and immersive learning environment. Suitable for ages 9+.

Details:

By the end of the 21st century, Earth was crippled with overpopulation and resource depletion. With nowhere left to expand on Earth, people looked to space to find new ways of providing for the endlessly growing population. Companies scrambled to find the next big thing in space exploration and solar system mining. Among them, two rose to the top: Star Odyssey Contractors, a space construction titan, and Meteor Quake Technologies, a leading asteroid mining company. Foreseeing greater opportunities as a single entity, the companies merged together and became Starquake Corporation. Since then, Starquake has grown into the uncontested leader of solar system corporations, developing revolutionary methods of extracting raw space materials and delivering them to Earth. Due to its success, it was able to fund the largest Mars colonization effort in human history.

The government, wary of Starquake’s rapidly growing power, began to scrutinize the company and limit its progress. In a final push to create a comprehensive workspace, free from the restrictions of Earth, Starquake invested in robotic mining and space-based manufacturing. It built everything it could possibly need on its space station: research labs, refining equipment, even crew quarters. Starquake Station, humanity’s first extraplanetary self-sustaining outpost, became the company’s main point of operations and the hub of anything and everything related to space.

Starquake Academy From the beginning, due to the cutting-edge nature of its work, Starquake had to operate in rigid secrecy. Working for the station was and still is an honorable lifelong commitment, one that is held by many of the leading scientists and engineers. And yet, Starquake felt like it was missing something: youthful creativity. In the Starquake manner of doing things, it proposed a radical solution: Starquake Academy, a program that allows young students on Earth to move to the Mars Orbit, learn directly from Starquake operations, and tackle real station problems.

For the past few years, Starquake has searched every corner of the world to find the students with the most potential, regardless of background, and invite them to the station. Its goal is to help the next generation of innovators lead the space industry to new heights.

You have been recruited into Starquake Academy and you are currently on your way to the Mars station. The journey to Mars is 6 months, and for part of that time you are in hibernation. But the station leaders would like to start your training as you approach Mars. You are training in a virtual holographic environment, the Neo Educational eXperience Immersion Simulator (NEXIS), that helps focus your training linking lessons to puzzles and games to reinforce learning.

While in the NEXIS environment, you will learn about how lasers operate from an atomic scale through how to build a laser, as this is an important component of the propulsion system onboard the space shuttle.

Each lesson focuses on a specific element of the operation of a laser, building from fundamental concepts around atoms.

Lesson 1: The lesson explains atoms, electrons and their ability to be excited.

Lesson 2: Light and wavelengths of light. This lesson teaches you about photons and light, and allows you to experiment with wavelengths.

Lesson 3: Excitation of an atom. This lesson explores how atoms receive energy and how that ties into the emission of light

Lesson 4: Energy transfer. You will learn about how atoms like Neon and Helium interact to share energy with each other and why that is important for a laser to work

Lesson 5: Making light. You will explore how atoms interact to make light.

Lesson 6: Laser light. With all the science behind how light is generated, you can now learn how a laser is assembled and how that generates a specific form of laser light.

You apply your skills through mini-games, puzzles and hands on experiments within the lessons. After your successful completion of the lesson, you find the shuttle is in trouble and your skills must be applied to ensure you live!

Designed for ages 9 and up.