📝 Concept:

The idea for My Day in Chinatown came from my own experience of studying at NYU Shanghai and later NYU New York, being in an international environment and learning Chinese and improving my English from daily interactions with peers, colleagues, and in general my environment. With this game I hoped to re-create this learning and cultural-exchange environment in a portable manner - a board game! I hoped to find a way to gamify language learning while including the potential for cross-cultural exchange and learning through immersion.

With that MDiC is a co-operative educational game for beginners and intermediate Chinese and English learners to practice conversational and applicable daily life Chinese and English vocabulary and grammar structures.

🔨 Game Design:

The design of the game was quite challenging as initially the idea was to craft a learning environment for beginner and intermediate Chinese learners.

After the first prototype testing, we received feedback that the game would be more fun if it could also provide an environment for English learners to learn English while Chinese learners learn Chinese - creating a true exchange experience.

That feedback led me to think of a visual design for the cards that mirrored the one for learning Chinese. Cards that had grammar structures, vocabulary, and challenges could be flipped to English.

Game loop: