Castle Kost

Learning goal

To show the historical facts worth knowing about Kost Castle: the brewery that once stood on the site, the kitchen, the armoury, the main hall, the chapel, and the statue with its history and story. The student assembles that picture on site, so how much of it they leave with depends on how much of the castle they actually visited.

My role

• Built all the logic and mechanics in the lesson: the information pickups and the count behind them, the unlock conditions, and the transitions in and out of the two unlocked activities.
• Wired progression to exploration: collected information is the only currency in the lesson, and it pays for horse riding first and crossbow shooting later.
• Balanced the two thresholds: how much of the castle has to be covered before the horse unlocks, and how much more before the crossbow follows.
• Built the two reward activities themselves, riding the horse and shooting the crossbow, along with the switch between them and walking the castle.

Systems I designed

• Collected information is the lesson's single progression currency. Every stop the student finds adds to one running count, and that count is the only thing the unlocks read.
• A two-stage gate sits on that count: crossing the first threshold unlocks horse riding, and a higher one unlocks crossbow shooting.
• The gate measures how much of the castle has actually been explored: the count moves only when a stop is found, so a student who walks past the content does not open the horse.
• The content stops are spread across the castle: the brewery that used to stand on the site, with several facts attached to it, plus the kitchen, the armoury, the main hall, the chapel, and a statue with its history and its story.
• A few easter-egg texts sit deliberately out of easy reach. They are optional content for the student who keeps looking once the obvious rooms are done.
• Both rewards are activities inside the same castle, so the unlock keeps the student on the site. The lesson does not finish on a results screen.

Core mechanics

• The castle is walked on foot: courtyards, walls and interiors are open, and reaching a stop collects its information and moves the count.
• Each stop carries the historical detail for its place. The former brewery has several facts on it; the kitchen, the armoury, the main hall, the chapel and the statue each carry their own.
• Reaching the first threshold unlocks horse riding, and the student can ride the castle grounds from that point on.
• Collecting further unlocks crossbow shooting, which arrives later in the lesson than the horse.
• The easter-egg texts take real effort to reach: they sit off the obvious path through the castle.