Skip to main content

Contest winner Dysbosis boldly goes where no shooter has gone before: Your intestines

gamify your phd
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Video games can do more than improve hand-eye coordination, spatial learning skills, and short-term memory. The way video games affect those skills, in fact, makes them the ideal platform to convey more complex information. The Wellcome Trust, the UK-based non-profit devoted to improving the health of people and animals alike, sees the potential in video games to help better people’s understanding of medical science outside the realm of business and academia. The Gamify Your PhD project backed by the Wellcome Trust was all about pairing scientists with game developers to birth games that could entertain as much as Pac-man while also demonstrating the theory behind complex biology.

Six development teams were gathered to develop games about subjects including molecular biology and addiction recovery. Judges included both department heads from the Wellcome Trust and even game industry figures like Charlie Hasdell, the designer of SingStar.

Recommended Videos

The Wellcome Trust announced the winner of its game jam on Friday, naming Margherita Coccia and developers Clockwork Cuckoo and Force of Habit’s game Dysbosis the champion.

Outward appearances can be deceiving. At first, Dysbosis looks like a subtle mix the old school shooting of Jeff Minter’s games liked Tempest,with the quiet beats of Q Games PixelJunk Eden. Unlike those games though, it demonstrates the principals behind intestinal immunology. “We have evolved different mechanisms in our intestine to keep harmful invading microbes at bay, while fostering our beneficial bacteria,” reads Force of Habit’s game description. “In Dysbosis, the player controls a collection of cells that form part of the intestinal wall, shooting harmful oncoming bacteria and allowing through the healthy bacteria.”

What’s fascinating about Coccia’s game is that it demonstrates the utility of old, pre-established game rules out of pure entertainment. Force of Habit didn’t reinvent the shooter wheel for Dysbosis, it used a rock solid game design to effectively communicate basic information about healthy human biology. Tempest was made to separate you from your quarters, but here Minter’s game is reconsidered and remade into something that is beneficial to society.

All the games from Gamify Your PhD are playable online for free.

Anthony John Agnello
Anthony John Agnello is a writer living in New York. He works as the Community Manager of Joystiq.com and his writing has…
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 gets a visual upgrade but stays wonderfully familiar
THPS 3 + 4

The year was 2001, and I was flat on my back in the middle of the street after bailing hard from a failed ollie.

Once I dusted myself off, I decided to try again, but in a safer, more digital aspect. Two decades ago, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 devoured my free time, and now the remake is back and doing the exact same thing. An excellent remake, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 brings two classic titles to a modern audience but adds little to the original experience in a way that leaves the game feeling curiously anachronistic.

Read more
The best PlayStation launch games, ranked
best ps1 games sony ps1

The most important time in a console's life is its launch. This is when a new piece of hardware needs to prove that it is worth investing in, which always comes down to games. Launch titles are rarely the best games on the system, although some of Nintendo's launch games buck that trend, but at least need to show off what the system can do. PlayStation always had a secondary selling point with its consoles, such as doubling as a CD player or DVD player, so it is interesting to speculate how successful those early consoles would've been judged solely on their games. We now have launch titles from the PS1 all the way up to the PS5 (and soon to be PS6) to look back on with fresh eyes to see just how good those first games were.

Air Combat - PlayStation 1

Read more
The Switch 2 is the perfect example of why console launches don’t feel special anymore
The Switch 2 being unboxed.

I will never forget the unbearable excitement I felt on that early morning on my 7th birthday. It was 1998, and Pokémon was the biggest thing in the world, especially for an elementary school kid like me. Except that I didn't have a single card or game to my name. In fact, I didn't even have a Game Boy. That, plus Pokémon, was the only thing I asked for that birthday, and I knew I would get it.

I can still remember lying awake half the night, unable to sleep while my imagination ran wild with unrealistic machinations of what the game would be like. I woke up just as early to the sounds of my parents and sister setting up decorations downstairs and bided my time before I could go down. It was a school day, but they could sense my excitement well in advance and agreed to let me open one thing before school.

Read more