Making the complex accessible

According to research, the majority (two thirds) of UK teens are either agnostic or atheist. Based on the hypothesis that a person’s understanding of death is guided by their religion, the absence of one suggests that the majority of teens are largely unsupported when trying to make sense of it.

PRELOADED was asked to create a game that ‘made death easier to deal with’. The challenge was to develop a positive and engaging way of getting teens to think about these big questions, encouraging debate and the forming of their own views on life and mortality.

The End was a free, online web-game commissioned by Channel 4 Education, and released in August 2011. It is a game of self-discovery for 14-19 year olds which integrates strategy, puzzles and philosophical questions into a world which explores a range of commonly (or less commonly) held views about death, philosophy and science.

A personal, but supported journey of discovery

The ambition is to make our players feel less alone in their feelings about death, and orientate them towards suitable philosophical thinking, providing comfort and the opportunity for their own journey of discovery.

This ambition is sits at the heart of the game through The Death Dial, the philosophy mechanic which learns about and reveals our player’s attitudes towards mortality through their play. As the player progresses through the game world, they are asked questions which require a binary response (“Do you think animals fear death?”), and it is these answers that shift the players around The Death Dial’s polar-axis. Moving between four thought-quadrants (Truth Teller, Mystic, Awakener and Crusader) the player’s answers position them in a philosophical landscape of famous thinkers including Mahatma Gandhi, Marie Curie and Ayn Rand. Perhaps most crucially, it shows their position in relation to their Facebook friends.

Set across the three worlds of mind, body and spirit, the player must use a unique shadow ‘n’ light mechanic to solve physics-based puzzles, answer questions and battle the world’s Guardians. The ultimate prizes are the 19 Death Objects, ranging from a ‘Memorial Diamond’ to a ‘Daredevil’s Helmet’, which deepen a player’s contextual knowledge of death and help them progress through the game.

Learning outcomes

The End is one our most ambitious games to date, with a wealth of content coupled with multi-level gameplay and genuinely engaging learning outcomes.

Since launch, the game received an overwhelmingly positive response from both the gaming community and online press. The project has benefited from huge word-of-mouth testimonials, relying on the audience and community to seed and share between themselves.

Since launch, over 1 million questions have been answered, showing us that the most popular quadrants were ‘The Awakener’ and ‘The Truth Teller’, and the famous thinker our players were most like was Albert Einstein.

We’ve had over 2.8 million levels played, with an average saved game time of over two hours. In total, the game has been played the equivalent of 4658 days – that’s 11 years of non-stop gaming!

With Flash no longer supported, the game is unfortunately no longer hosted online. You can contact us if you have any questions, or browse our recent work here.