Play as a young journalist covering events as they unfold in the fictional town of Twin Lakes. Made in partnership with UW School of Journalism and Mass Communication with funding from the Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment.
In Headlines and High Water, players take on the role of a young journalist in the fictional town of Twin Lakes, where the annual Cherry Festival is thrown into chaos by a catastrophic flood. The player is tasked with interviewing locals and writing stories to keep the town informed—all while staying safe during the town’s worst flood of the century.
Throughout the game, players build trust with the townspeople and interview a cast of quirky characters—like Birdie, the aptly-named nature conservationist, and Fred Finkler, the gardener who’ll talk your ear off. In the end, the player’s reporting will determine if Twin Lakes is still around a year from now, or if future floods wash the town right off the map.
The game includes six levels. Each level takes approximately 10-20 minutes to play. Most players can complete the game in 2, 45-minute class periods, but Players can save their progress and return to the game, making it usable within a typical classroom context.
In this text-based, choose-your-adventure style game, players take on the role of a journalist in the small town of Twin Lakes. When a major flood hits, the player must write news stories for every stage of the disaster:
By covering these topics, players learn what components are required for different types of stories. They gather quotes, facts, photos, statistics, diagrams, and anecdotes. After each story, players receive a score based on the quality and breakdown of their piece, and they see (through art and feedback) how their story affected people in the town.
The Journalism Game includes crosscutting concepts and can be used for teaching science and media literacy. The third and fourth news stories, in particular, focus on the scientific study of flooding, watersheds, and climate change, while the game as a whole introduces players to the process of fact-finding and how journalistic knowledge is created. Players learn about what goes into crafting a news story, including:
Through their choices, players can also witness the consequences of cutting corners and failing to check their sources, ranging from losing public trust to getting fired from their job.
This game, and especially the third and fourth news stories, explores topics of flooding, urban planning, wetlands, and climate change. Players learn about the factors that have contributed to flooding in the fictional town of Twin Lakes. This includes the impact of wetland destruction and increased rainfall brought on by climate change. In the course of writing their stories, the player character interviews limnology professors and researchers, DNR experts, and wetland experts and conservationists.
Our team is based at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. We make learning games that bring contemporary research to the public, and we use the game data to understand how people learn.
Interested in making something together? email David Gagnon
for all other inquiries, please contact Reyna Groff
Read the stories behind our games and meet the researchers and teachers who have teamed up with us.
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