PIXEL: Challenges of Designing a Professional Board Game for Astronomy Education

PIXEL is a professional board game developed through collaboration between Italian astrophysicists at INAF and professional game designers, aimed at teaching scientific thinking, particularly image resolution and the research process, through play rather than explicit instruction. Its origins lie in a peg-based "Talking about Resolution" activity for children, which was reworked into an astronomy-themed game. Mechanics such as worker placement, resource management, and tile-based image resolution, with tiles representing incremental levels from 8x8 to 128x128 pixels, are mapped to real astrophysical research processes.

The central finding concerns engagement and perceived content. In a survey of over 200 teenagers and young adults at public events, PIXEL scored an average of 5.2 out of 7 on enjoyment, and players most often recognized the intended lessons: that higher-resolution observations demand greater time and technological investment, and that research is a multidisciplinary collaboration. Both game experts and educators offered positive feedback during development.

The scope of the evidence is deliberately limited. The survey measured enjoyment and players' perception of scientific content, not learning outcomes. Assessment of educational effectiveness is being pursued in a separate long-term study across five Italian high schools, and those results remained pending at the time of publication. The work is therefore best understood as a documented design account with preliminary engagement data rather than a validated educational intervention.

The paper closes with a forward-looking plan to produce a print-and-play edition that would ease adoption in classrooms while retaining the game's physical format. Development was supported by Italian PRIN-INAF and DIGAS funding, and the work is situated within the literature on game-based learning, gamification, and science education.