Revamp Monkey Fruit Ideas

We've storyboarded one take on Monkey Fruit ... a game designed to help kids understand the process of forming a hypthesis (observe, then create one, then test it) and understand some of the steps in an experiment.

The storyboard is at http://cahedev.nmsu.edu/development/storyboards/hypothesis/. Basically, game players find out that monkeys do different things when they eat fruit... but researchers don't know what they do. So, game players observe monkeys with fruit, then create hypotheses (If I give a monkey a banana, he climbs a rope), then test hypothesis (give the monkey a banana), then report findings on a crib sheet. With the final list of what fruit does what, the game player can run the monkey through a puzzle to get gold.

Here's the problems:

1. Right now, it is kind of boringly repetitve: watch monkey eat banana, propose what will happen, give monkey banana. Still it is a format of "learn, then play"
   
2. We're having trouble figuring out a puzzle where you can use all the fruit at once. It really helps in puzzle games to introduce the gameplayer gradually to a puzzle... first, use a banana, then, use a banana and a mango. This makes the puzzle level really long.
   
3. We'd like to merge the puzzle playing (use banana, use mango, etc) with the observation-testing process.
   

Our new plan is to start with the puzzle, and introduce the player to one fruit at a time, having them hypothesize and experiment each time a new fruit is revealed. In revamping the game, we need to still keep:

• Observe before making hypothesis
  
• Hypothesis includes independent and dependent variable
  
• Experiment on one variable at a time
  
• Report findings and use the findings to solve problems or develop new experiments
  

We're going to also take it to paper first, before doing an intereactive proof of concept game.