Limes (the Roman Frontier): Developing a Video Game for History Learning

The paper presents the design and development of Limes, a 2D top-down educational video game built in Unity with pixel art graphics, intended for use in 5th and 6th grade German secondary school history classes. Its central aim is to address a gap in the literature: while video games have been shown to support learning in various subjects, their potential for history learning remains under-explored, and few history games align closely enough with curricular objectives to be easily integrated into classroom teaching. The game is set in third-century AD southwestern Germany and follows an Alemanni child who forms a friendship with a Roman centurion, Ariovist, amid rising tensions between the two groups. Its educational goals include fostering motivation and interest in history, understanding of Roman-Germanic relations, historical empathy, critical thinking, and intercultural outcomes.

The game consists of five levels, each with a mandatory main mission and an optional secondary mission that offers varied gameplay such as stealth, combat, puzzles, and horse racing, along with a performance-based star rating. A central feature is a codex system that lets players unlock historical explanations, images, and custom maps through interactions with characters, with engagement logged in a MongoDB database to allow analysis of learning behaviour. The development process drew on game-based learning, educational and cultural psychology, intergroup contact theory, and history education research, and it relied on Unity's asset store, C# scripting, and AI-generated voice narration to keep production efficient and low-cost.

Initial testing with academics and avid gamers produced very positive reception, and feedback led to improvements in codex guidance, bug fixes, and translation and audio synchronization in its bilingual English and German versions. The authors acknowledge that the game's educational effectiveness has not yet been empirically established. They outline a planned sequence of pilot tests with students, laboratory usability experiments, and a large-scale classroom evaluation to assess effects on interest, historical knowledge, and diversity beliefs.