Becoming the Phoenix: Educational Game Design

Becoming a Phoenix: From the Ashes We Rise, is an immersive game-like experience aimed at teaching incarcerated youths emotional coping skills based upon meditation, breathing techniques, and behavioral therapy. The hope is to arm those struggling through a traumatic experience with tools so they feel more in control and empowered.

Wrapped in a narrative of the path of a Phoenix rising to enlightenment, the player must train with three mentors and complete a series of lessons to reach the ultimate goal and win. Each training focuses on one of the three areas—mindfulness, breathing, and emotional coping. These trainings will allow the player to complete the game but will also arm the person with helpful tools for the future. After each training, Phoenix is awarded crystals to commemorate their achievement and remember their teachings.

Becoming the Phoenix aims to address some of these issues by creating a positive immersive environment for the young persons to learn coping skills and address emotions associated with trauma. The player will feel a sense of engagement with the non-player character mentors teaching them. They will feel a sense of achievement in completing the trainings and the game. And hopefully taking away tools that will allow them to better their interpersonal relationships and feel a deeper sense of meaning in their lives. 

Some key features of the game include:

The Main Setting - the main setting was modeled in 3ds max and consists of a fictional landscape inspired by South Africa with the Baobab trees, open clay-speckled plains, and unique geographical mounds. The environment engenders the player with a sense of calm and unique beauty while it is translated into a digital low-poly world.

The NPCS - The Non player characters serve an important role in the game as they allow the player to create a teacher-student relationship. 

The first non-player character that the Player meets is the Panther who teaches a breathing exercise that has its fundamental principles based in mindfulness. It is called 4-7-8 breathing and helps the body enter into a parasympathetic response. This response is what handles bodily functions during relaxation, eating, and sleeping. This is in contrast to the sympathetic response that activate during times of stress. Deep breathing is an understated yet powerful tool in for mental health coping skills and is one area where Becoming the Phoenix taps into.

The second NPC that the Phoenix meets is the Owl who walks through a brief mindfulness meditation about non-reactivity. A key aspect of mindfulness is acceptance or letting experiences be as they are without judging or criticizing and without impulsive reactions. The mediation equates this thought exercise as letting thoughts pass by like clouds in the sky. There is a meditative video of clouds passing in the background and the player can watch this video, use the breathing bubble or close their eyes during this meditation. 

The Lion is the third and final NPC and mentor that the player meets. The lion’s lesson is based on anger coping and unhelpful thinking patterns identified in Cognitive Behavior Therapy practices. The lion also explains some basic facts about anger as an emotional response and its relationship to trauma and internal narrative. 

Here is the video animation that the player watches and learns from the Lion. It focuses on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and basic anger coping strategies.

Below are some stills from the game.