Serious Game Classification

Great Migrations is based on the National Geographic documentary series with the same name. It's an educational game where the player gets to learn about the migrations of animal species. The idea is to help the animals on their journey and guide them through the different environments that they have to pass through. This include forests, rivers, plains and jungles. The player has to anticipate the movements of predators whom he has to direct his animals past.

The game shows the environments from an isometric perspective. Animals spawn at the bottom left corner of the screen and the player has to lead them towards the safe zone located in the top right. Similar to Flight Control, the player guides the animals by using the mouse to draw paths for them to follow. The animal that the player clicks on and draws from becomes a leader. Other animals that are close become followers and will use the same path. The player can therefore move large groups of animals without drawing a path for each of them. Throughout the environment the player will find predators that he has to guide his animals around or they will be killed. The environment consists of different types of terrain that influences the animals' movement speed. The colours of the drawn path tells where the speed is slower or faster. Predators do more damage on slow moving animals.

The player gets migration points for each animal that reaches the safe zone. These can be used to buy helpers. Helpers have various effects such as healing and increasing the speed of the migrants or making the predators sluggish. These can be upgraded to make them more effective.

There are four stages each representing the migration of a certain animal. These animals are monarch butterflies, salmon, zebras and red crabs. Each stage consists of a number of legs each with four waves of animals. For each wave more and more animals have to be saved and more predators will appear. [source:mobygames]

Distribution : Internet - Commercial
Platform(s) : Macintosh - PC (Windows)

Links

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• http://www.mobygames.com/game/great-migrations/