Exploring Mars: An Immersive Survival Game for Planetary Education

"Exploring Mars" is an educational survival game built in Unreal Engine 5 that aims to teach planetary science through enquiry-based, narrative-driven play. Its central thesis is that intrinsic motivation, grounded in self-determination theory's emphasis on autonomy, relatedness, and competence, can make learning about Martian conditions engaging without interrupting the flow of gameplay. The game's progression moves through a dust storm, oxygen, food, energy, and cave exploration stages, with learning objectives covering Martian climate, survival hazards, and exploration technologies.

A distinctive feature of the design is Cosmo, an AI companion powered by GPT-3.5 Turbo, Azure Text-to-Speech, and locally run Whisper speech recognition, which guides players through inquiry rather than delivering direct instruction. The environments are derived from HiRISE Digital Terrain Models of three Martian regions, giving the terrain a basis in real planetary data.

The preliminary evaluation, conducted with four undergraduate participants, found that all showed some knowledge gain. Engagement was strongest for the visual environment and Cosmo's interactions, rather than for the explicit educational components. One element, the InSight lander screen, was largely overlooked. The authors judge that the game met its intended learning outcomes, while acknowledging that the small sample and preliminary nature of the evaluation limit how far these results can be generalized.

The concluding findings are qualitative and rest on the cited literature across games-based learning, flow and self-determination theory, and AI-driven NPC and voice technologies, rather than on quantitative measurement. The work's scope is therefore best understood as a design and proof-of-concept contribution to planetary education, with its effectiveness still requiring validation at larger scale.