The brilliant game designers and producers at Tiltfactor came to us with an idea to create an exciting new type of sport for players to enjoy, complete with seasons and in-game powerups. The brief was to create this game, all while harnessing the power of gamer crowdsourcing to improve heritage library content.
You can read more about the project here: Tiltfactor Press Release for Beanstalk and Smorball or play the game (HTML5 Web Game): Smorball
Smorball is a challenging HTML5 browser game that asks players to correctly type the words they see on the screen –punctuation and all. The more words they type correctly, the quicker opposing teams are defeated, and the closer the Eugene Melonballers get to the Dalahäst Trophy.
Tiltfactor uses its unique design methodology, Critical Play, to incorporate fundamental human values and psychological principles to promote learning, attitude change, and behavior change. Through board games, card games, sports, urban games, and digital games for a variety of platforms, Tiltfactor are able to publish both qualitative and quantitative research results from their studies.
Tiltfactor is now at Dartmouth College and is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and national research groups.
We were impressed by the final level of polish of the games, and I appreciated [Pepwuper’s] ability to be flexible with small feature requests as needs were revealed by playtesting.
– Max J. Seidman, Game Designer at Tiltfactor
