The Lost Code
Teachers
Teacher's guide
BackIntroduction to the Game
Game Description
The concept behind the game is to plunge players into the exciting and challenging world of espionage using the latest hi-tech technologies usually seen in James Bond and Mission Impossible movies. A brilliant historian disappears in mysterious circumstances. Before he disappeared, he set up security systems for three museums we can no longer get into. Players try to solve puzzles for each museum. A character who claims to be in charge of the highly sophisticated security systems recruits the player to try to deactivate the security systems so that the three Québec museums can again be accessed. If players accept the mission, the adventure begins as they seek information, solve puzzles, understand history, and think like a historian.
Players use their computers to control a mobile device—a flying camera. This wacky probe moves through every museum room. Players use their mice to click on objects and obtain information about their origins and contexts in order to discover the access codes for each room.
History and education are at the very core of the game, the goal of which is to collect information to solve the puzzles and break codes. Once players have answered the questions, they can unlock doors and deactivate motion detectors to advance from one room to the next toward their mission's goal. The game is based on the collection of historical elements along the way. Elements from the past allow players to better understand the present with respect to social and economic development.
Players move from room to room in each museum. As the game progresses and history unfolds chronologically, the challenges get more difficult as players/investigators put together the pieces of our economic development.
Target Audience
The game is aimed in particular at secondary school students (Cycle 2) and addresses a number of elements from the history and citizenship program. The broader public is nevertheless also invited to take part, and young and old will have fun solving the puzzles.
Game Theme
Players travel to three historic sites from different periods of Québec's history to learn more about milestones in French Canadian social and economic development. The game enables them to familiarize themselves with French Canadians' economic dependency in the seigneurial system and their quest for self-sufficiency, which led to them taking charge of production methods in the industrialized era, i.e., from 1790 to the present day. To this end, each museum uses puzzles to help players discover different periods of Québec's social and economic development.
