Mobile game for teaching kids particle physics launched by former Angry Birds team members
Singapore first to get Big Bang Legends educational game, backed by a brainy advisory board, with broader roll-out targeted this year
Their pitch? A game that can teach particle physics to five-year-olds.
Finnish game studio Lightneer was founded in 2015 by Lauri Jarvilehto and Lauri Konttori. They were previously a consultant and a lead game designer, respectively, with Rovio Entertainment – the makers of Angry Birds. Last year, the start-up snagged Rovio's chief marketing officer and brand ambassador Peter Vesterbacka – the game developer named one of Time magazine’s most influential people in 2011.
The company's first mobile game is Big Bang Legends, in which players use a particle collider to blast antimatter monsters, collect quarks that are needed to form protons and neutrons, and build atoms of different elements. “Everything that happens in the game is actually based on science,” says Jarvilehto, who is also CEO.
Embedded between the gameplay elements are mini video lectures on the various elements and their properties, put together in collaboration with brainy representatives from CERN, Harvard, Oxford and the University of Helsinki.