TimeMesh: Producing and Evaluating a Serious Game

Serious Games are specifically designed to develop mental abilities and skills such as strategy, mental calculation and decision making but the acquisition of deep knowledge with Serious Games is less well understood. To improve this understanding, a game called TimeMesh, as well as the needed graphic engine, called TimeMesh engine, -a multi-player graphical adventure engine inspired by the 90s graphic adventures created by LucasArts- have been developed. Time--Mesh has been designed to impart knowledge and competences in the area of History and Geography. To test the acquisition of knowledge with Time-mesh a complete process of evaluation was designed, divided in three parts, always with user intervention: first, with the game developers, then with teachers and lastly, but most importantly with students. In this paper we present our experience in designing, implementing and evaluating TimeMesh and formulate the conclusions of this study.