Abstract:

In this work, we present "Sirius", a serious knowledge game for android devices. Playing Sirius requires only an android device but non-trivial effort on behalf of players. Our game contains multiple sessions such as spelling, semantics and proverbs sessions for the greek language as well as sessions for greek and european history, in greek and english. Sessions are rich collections of questions of various types including yes/no and multiple choice. Players start with a maximum of three lives. They are also given 30 seconds to answer each question. In case of a wrong answer or when running out of available time for selecting an answer, players lose a life. However, after five correct answers, players can earn back a previously lost life. Proceeding to the next question is not done automatically, but it is up to players to decide when to proceed to the next question of the game session. In addition, in case of a wrong asnwer, players are presented with comprehensive feedback, so that apart from entertainment, Sirius also offers a quite useful learning experience. Players achieve a score which results from their total unused time. On the basis of their individual scores, players are ranked on a top-score list.

Furthermore, unlike other existing similar knowledge games, Sirius allows players to create their own sessions by adding questions in the Sirius repository. In this way, an active community can be formed including members who do not only participate in existing game sessions but have the opportunity to express their creativity and imagination by creating their own game sessions. In this way, coupling participation with creation can result in truly engaged players performing a dual role since apart from recipients can also act as providers of knowledge.

Sirius is a lightweight mobile application with an elegant and user-friendly interface. Sirius has been developed using android studio and the platform independent language programming language kotlin, which is supported by Google and has only very recently started being exploited for android development.

Keywords:

Serious knowledge game, android, multilingual, Greek language, Greek and European history, android studio, kotlin.