Extinction Party
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What do you do when the world falls apart? Extinction Party is an educational puzzle game that explores the history of life on Earth by looking at the five major mass extinction events. It will take the form of a 3-foot high standing pentagon shape, with each side of the pentagon containing fun ways for participants to explore what life looked like before and after the extinction, and how why scientists think it happened in a certain way.
When I think about humanity’s current climate crisis, I often find it helpful to look to the past for context. Cataclysmic events can happen, and while life always finds a way to rebound, it often doesn’t look the same as it did before.
The history of life on Earth isn’t a smooth progression. It’s full of leaps and setbacks. I wanted to use this piece to explore life as a malleable thing.
Of course, it isn’t lost on me that I happened to be working on a project about devastation and rebirth at a time when it feels like the world is falling apart. Cataclysmic events can happen, and while life always finds a way to rebound, it often doesn’t look the same as it did before.
I want both kids and adults to be able to play with this thing and really get something out of it. I've tried to make things playable for kids seven and up, and also provide some information that older players might not know.
The story of each mass extinction event will be told in two parts
Section one will be on the outside of the puzzle, and will invite users to act like a detective trying to figure out when an extinction event happened, and why.
For this part of the installation, I’ve invited users to act like a detective discovering unusually high levels of the element iridium at a certain level in the rock strata.
After that, they’ll be prompted to look for fossils on either side of the boundary that they’ve just discovered. The fact that these two fossils look so different from each other help to tell us that an extinction event occurred.
Section two will take participants back in time. The puzzle will open up, and players will see what life looked like before and after the extinction event on a video screen.
Upon completion of the game, participants will be given a QR code, which will lead them to a web page containing more detailed information on what we know about the extinction.
I hope that this piece can be implemented in a larger museum exhibit that uses puzzle games as a way to explore the history of our planet. This particular piece looks at extinctions, but there are tons of fascinating events to explore, and a project that looks at all of them could take up a whole room.
