The Intelligent Information Systems group of the FHNW is researching conversational agents as a part of an educational game. While the conversational agent was already in development, there was no game environment to interact with these conversational agents. Therefore, this project aimed to develop such a game environment where students can interact with these conversational agents. The final solution also had to include a backend game designer for lecturers to create new games that allow the game to be adapted to different learning tasks, possibly also different domains or modules.

Based on the project’s basic requirements which were discussed in a kick-off meeting, a concept was developed which set the project’s scope and was agreed upon by the client and supervisor. The student then created a prototype of the game environment and started to outline all the system features with the help of use cases. The prototype was presented to the client and ensured the chosen technologies and direction of the project aligned with the client’s vision. The prototype and use cases then formed the basis for the implementation of the software, which was then deployed.

An adaptable web application-based game environment was developed in this bachelor thesis. Next to implementing all requirements of the project, many additional features were added to the final solution to offer a high level of flexibility and adaptability in creating games. The implemented solution includes a server-side application developed with Node.js, a PostgreSQL database, and a client-side application using the JavaScript framework Angular. The game environment allows students to navigate between rooms and engage with conversational agents. Lecturers can strongly adapt the game environment to suit the setting in their domain or module. When creating a new game, lecturers are free to define the number of rooms and characters and create an unlimited nesting of rooms. Features of the game designer, such as creating a game documentation, publishing or unpublishing a game, or playing a draft of the game, improve the user experience of the tool. A user manual, available to download in the software, provides descriptions for each step of the game design process. Lastly, recommendations were made on how the software could be extended in the future.