Osu!

The Gigue Is Up: High Culture Gets Game

Tafelkids: The Quest for Arundo Donax, a Flash-based game for ages 8 to 14 commissioned by Toronto's Tafelmusik orchestra, tests whether a Baroque music education can be delivered through a familiar game format without losing its content.

• The project is a 2009 DiGRA exploratory design account: 'Tafelkids: The Quest for Arundo Donax,' a free Flash-based game for ages 8–14, teaches Baroque music through mini-games covering orchestra identification, musical inscription, and a rhythm-action-style Baroque dance game.
• Play-testing with more than 150 students aged 12–14 across three sessions showed high engagement but only mixed evidence of learning, as students often ignored instructions and curricular information bubbles.
• Post-play recall of dance types, instrument sounds, and historical facts was encouraging but not conclusive evidence that the game produced learning.