The game combines many of the interactive elements offered by DiBL, sorting students into different groups, letting them decide who to interview at different stages, quizzing them on the historical context, letting them share their thoughts on complex questions through custom word clouds, tasking them with deciphering coded messages, and ultimately asking them to guess which of the many colorful characters is the culprit. All of this is accomplished with simple and inutitive interactivity, in a format that lets the teacher control the game as easily as clicking through a slideshow presentation.

The game’s narrative and educational content was developed in close collaboration with the client, Grænseforeningen (The Danish Border Association), an organization supporting Danish language and culture in the Danish-German border region. Grænseforeningen wanted to offer Danish schools an innovative and playful way to learn about this unique period of history. While they brought the domain expertise, we brought a strong knowledge of classroom-based games and interactive narrative, and a platform that could support the wide range of interactions necessary to bring their vision to life. Grænseforeningen has since used DiBL to create more learning materials themselves, building on the foundation we created together.