Roll to the Rescue 

Team Hamster! is a digital first series geared towards 4-6 year olds that helps kids think creatively and use engineering skills to solve problems with everyday tools.

In Roll to the Rescue, players help the hamsters roll their way through a dozen mazes to find their favorite things before Janitor Ruff throws them away. Players use simple machines to reach high up places and get to the end of each maze. They can navigate through the hamsters mazes or create their own.

2022 Kidscreen Best Alternative Game nominee.

Areas of Focus

My areas of focus included helping to establish the Team Hamster! visual brand, creating all visual components, including illustration and animation, working closely with producers and developers on wireframes and overall game structure, and conducting play testing with kids.

Framework Goals

Roll to the Rescue aimed to meet the following goals:

1. Understand that it is possible to solve a problem using engineering and that problems may have many acceptable solutions.

2. Understand that asking questions, making observations, and gathering information are helpful in thinking about problems, and that it is important to clearly understand the problem before beginning to design a solution.

   1. Use the engineering design process.

   2. Understand that engineering is a collaborative process

3. Understand that designs can be conveyed through sketches, drawings, or physical models to communicate ideas for a problem’s solutions to other people.

4. Understand that because there is always more than one possible solution to a problem, it is useful to compare and test designs.

Curriculum

• Science & Engineering Practices: Designing Solutions. Use tools and/or materials to design and/or build a device that provides a solution to a specific problem.

• Engineering & Technology: Begin to understand that people depend on various technologies and tools in their lives and that life would be very different without technology.

• Physical Science / Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions. Deepen understanding of the motion and stability of objects.

• Cross-Cutting Concepts: Cause & Effect. Systems and System Models.

Make Your Own Maze

Roll to the Rescue also included a “sandbox” portion that let users create their own maze. Kids enjoyed being silly and creative with the hamsters.

Make your own maze helped us reinforce our curriculum goals, including:

• It is possible to solve a problem using engineering

• There is more than one answer to a problem

• Simple machine knowledge

User Testing

Children ages 5-8 were included throughout the process via four in-person and virtual user testing sessions. The game was in various levels of development during testing. We conducted two rounds of prototype testing and two rounds of Alpha testing.

Objective

The goal was to test the game across four major areas of focus: simple machine knowledge, keyboard and touchscreen controls, game navigation, and machine interaction. We tested with twenty 5-8 year olds using iPads and laptops.

User Testing Results

• Simple machine knowledge: majority of the groups were familiar with ramps and springs. Older kids were familiar with levers, younger kids were not. Very few kids were familiar with pulleys.

• Keyboard and touchscreen controls: younger kids had a little trouble with dexterity to control the hamster balls on iPad. They adapted by tapping in the direction they wanted to go rather than dragging. Users had success when using the keyboard arrows.

• Game navigation: kids found collecting items to be very motivating. Kids had animated reactions to items like the slippery ice and sticky gum and grew more confident in their play as the game went on.

• Machine interaction: Kids had success with the lever and pulley. Some kids did not understand how to change the ramp height. We later added a button pulse to mitigate this. Some kids had a hard time with the 3 levels of spring compression. We later shortened it to two levels for less strain on the user.

Takeaways

• Roll to the Rescue seemed appropriately difficult for our target audience: age 5 kids. Older kids tended to find it too easy.

• Unfamiliarity with levers and pulleys prompted us to include mid-game instructions on all the various simple machines.

• To allowed younger kids to more easily interact with the game, dev included more sensitivity around the hamster balls on touchscreen.

Post-Launch Results

Roll to the Rescue launched in December of 2020. It was the top PBS Kids performing game over the week of Christmas and beyond. Post launch statistics:

• 283,000 game starts

• 2.3 Million level starts

• 17 minute play time average