Introducing LeCo - Learn & Conquer

So, my case study will be about LeCo, an interactive language learning game. The idea is to follow the clues and solve the riddle - and learn a foreign language on the go. The man behind the idea is Krister Hymon and the webpage is in here.

Is it worth it? I tried the game in the Net and found it entertaining. The player is dropped in the middle of a city (Heidelberg, Germany) and his task is to walk around to find the answer to the given question. The "maze" is actually made of video films, so the user sees real recordings of the town itself - an aspect that felt really nice. This version is about learning German, so the questions are made auf Deutsch. And I think here is the biggest weakness of the game: you need to know quite a lot of German before you can play the game to learn German. There are grammatic tests you need to solve before you get to the next level. As for me, the difficulty level was pretty much spot on - I could follow the story and answer questions with minor difficulties, but all in all I enjoyed exploring the city more than learning the language. :)

The whole thing reminded me of the Journeyman Project -series (Buried in Time, Legacy of Time) and it was fun, but I think there are many things that need to be enhanced. The idea includes having a community, where people from different cities can produce their own levels, that would be cool to have. For just one person this is too much, but there is potential of making it better.

I haven't check the other nominees, so it's hard to say how good chances this would have as an overall winner. The idea is cool, though, but I would like to see more variety inside one level. Well, this is just a prototype anyway, so the chances are good to go on. Can't wait to get to talk to Krister - he was happy to get the mail from me, he says he got the idea for this thing when he was visiting Tampere. (w00t?!)