DS-Hacker: Teaching Data Structures and Algorithms Through Analogical Representations in the Game Environment and Game Challenges

DS-Hacker is a serious game designed to teach college students the fundamentals of Binary Search Trees (BSTs), including their basic components, the BST ordering property, and core algorithms such as the get operation and in-order traversal. The work is grounded in meaningful learning and constructivist theory, which hold that abstract topics are learned more effectively when connected to familiar knowledge. The authors propose using analogies in which the game environment serves as a structural model of a BST and the game challenges represent its algorithms, with the narrative delivering the mapping between game elements and data structure concepts. The game is a 3D action-adventure PC title built in Unity with a science-fiction aesthetic, in which the player, a robotic hacker, navigates a maze of linked chambers that each hold a comparable key, stored data, and links to up to two other chambers, arranged according to the BST property.

The design progresses in difficulty: early levels ask players to identify BST components within the environment, while later levels require applying the get algorithm using chamber keys to locate stored information. The paper includes a gameplay video and a screenshot of the first level to illustrate the implementation. Notably, the document presents the game as a proof of concept at an evaluation stage rather than reporting empirical results, so no learning outcomes or motivation data are yet available.

The planned evaluation uses a pre-test and post-test design with an experimental group and a control group among undergraduate students. Learning gains will be measured with a calibrated BST knowledge test, and intrinsic motivation will be assessed with the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory, with results to be analyzed using ANCOVA. The authors anticipate that findings will either support the game's analogical approach or identify areas requiring revision, and that they will inform guidelines for developing future analogy-based serious games.