Let me tell you about this game
Project description
Assassin’s Creed: Incursion is a mobile game designed to make learning history more engaging through interactive gameplay. The game combines historical exploration with strategic card game mechanics, allowing players to discover real-world locations while collecting and using character cards inspired by the past. Its core goal is to make history more interesting and accessible for a broad audience by blending education with gaming.
The experience uses a location based play style similar to Pokémon GO, encouraging players to explore their surroundings and learn about historical landmarks in an immersive way. By merging game design, education, and augmented exploration, the project demonstrates how interactive media can transform learning into play. The game combines exploration, strategic card battles, and narrative-driven
The Backstory
How might we turn history into an interactive experience using gamefication that encourages active learning?
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History is often experienced as passive information, making it difficult for learners to stay engaged or remember key events. Many educational tools lack interactivity, context, and motivation. This project explores the question above.
The story follows an enemy faction attempting to alter the timeline by travelling into the past and creating alternate realities. The player’s mission is to stop this group by defeating them in card battles while uncovering historical events and knowledge.
Players explore the real world, where physical locations trigger historical encounters. Each encounter is part of a larger narrative:
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A card-based battle against enemy agents
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Unlock historical information linked to the location
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Narrative progression through the timeline conflict
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Player explores real-world locations. A location triggers a historical encounter.
The Gameplay
The player battles enemy agents using their card deck.
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Winning unlocks historical information and timeline fragments.
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After defeating enough enemies, a Boss Tower becomes available.
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The player challenges the tower and battles a powerful boss character.
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Defeating the boss unlocks major historical content.
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A boss battle begins once the boss is found.​
The player enters a 360° reconstruction of the location in the past
Design Process
001
Connect Phase ​
The project started by understanding the target audience through desk research, interviews, and surveys. I explored users’ interests in history, gaming habits, learning preferences, and motivations for discovering new places. These insights were translated into Insight Cards and used to guide the concept development.
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One key insight was that people who dislike history often had negative experiences with it at school. The right teacher can make even history interesting.
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Concept phase​
After the Connect phase, I presented my research findings through a Pecha Kucha presentation and research poster. Based on the feedback, I developed six design directions exploring different ways to make history more engaging.
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I then created two low- to mid-fidelity prototypes: a 360° YouTube experience set in World War II and an RPG-style game combining history, exploration, and quests. These prototypes were tested with peers and teachers during a prototype party.
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The feedback from these tests helped me refine the design directions into a final version, which formed the foundation for the final concept.
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Create Phase
To explore the user experience and gameplay flow, I created an initial set of wireframes. I then connected the concept to the Assassin’s Creed universe, taking inspiration from Assassin’s Creed Rebellion and developing it as a potential spin-off focused on historical exploration and learning.
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I further refined the user journey, progression system, and core gameplay mechanics. These combined location-based exploration, historical discovery, and strategic card battles, inspired by Dragon Ball Z: Harukanaru Densetsu.
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The concept was developed into a playable prototype, which allowed me to test and refine the gameplay loop and user experience. Based on the results, I created a second iteration with improved mechanics and interactions.
The project concluded with a final presentation, using posters and visual materials to communicate the concept, design decisions, and development process.
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