ENC#YPTED: An Educational Game for Programming in the Unity Engine

In an era of digitalization, the relevance of programming in real-time development environments is constantly increasing. This also applies to the Unity Engine. Within the framework of a bachelor thesis, the first freely accessible Unity programming learning game called 'ENC#YPTED' was developed. ENC#YPED aims to support a positive learning experience in the acquisition of programming skills. This is achieved by immersing the learner in a game world. The application was iteratively improved and refined according to user-centered development through user experience testing. This adaptation creates a high level of usability. Game duration and difficulty were not relevant for most of the test subjects to achieve their goals. Considering the high level of motivation and entertainment of the testers, it can be assumed that participants had a flow experience while playing ENC#YPTED. This paper describes the game concept and the user-centered design research accompanying the implementation process.