Students
Juniors, Media & Comm. Design Juniors,
Visual Comm. Design + AI
Course Name
Design Tech. 3: Game Design & Dev.
Teachers
Aaron Leo, Meng Wang (D&I, Tongji Univ.), Zhao Zhuodong
Special Thanks
Wang Lei, Zhou Yuan, Zhang Yao
Partner Organization
Shanghai Astronomy Museum
Students
Juniors, Media & Comm. Design Juniors,
Visual Comm. Design + AI
Course Name
Design Tech. 3: Game Design & Dev.
Teachers
Aaron Leo, Meng Wang (D&I, Tongji Univ.), Zhao Zhuodong
Special Thanks
Wang Lei, Zhou Yuan, Zhang Yao
Partner Organization
Shanghai Astronomy Museum
Students
Juniors, Media & Comm. Design Juniors, Visual Comm. Design + AI
Course Name
Design Tech. 3: Game Design & Dev.
Partner Organization
Shanghai Astronomy Museum
Teachers
Aaron Leo, Meng Wang (D&I, Tongji Univ.), Zhao Zhuodong
Special Thanks
Wang Lei, Zhou Yuan, Zhang Yao
The course Design Technology 3: Digital Game Design and Development, led by Professor Liu Zhejun, is a required major course offered by the College of Design and Innovation at Tongji University for third-year students in the Media and Communication Design program. It has been recognized as a Shanghai First-Class Undergraduate Course and has won the First Prize in the Shanghai Teaching Innovation Competition. The course covers a wide range of topics, including the history of game development, game design theory, and game development technologies. By the end of the semester, students are required to form teams of around five members to complete the design and development of an original indie game.
This year’s Game Design and Development course was carried out in collaboration with the Shanghai Astronomy Museum. Under the theme of “astronomy-themed educational games,” students explored inspiration, developed creative concepts, designed solutions, and ultimately completed their game projects. During the development process, three astronomy experts from the Shanghai Astronomy Museum—Wang Lei, Zhou Yuan, and Zhang Yao—provided professional guidance to the students on multiple occasions. After a semester of work, ten game projects were successfully completed, each combining educational value with engaging gameplay. Please enjoy.
Rat-A-Tat
Wheel of the Cosmos Sisterhood / Du Haichuan, Wang Hengle, Zhang Yiyun, Chen Yang, Zhang Shaohe, Deng Ruitong
Overview
Rat-A-Tat is a 3D rolling adventure game set in a futuristic Mars base, presented from a microscopic perspective. In 2049, a meteorite impact leaves base personnel stranded outside with oxygen running out. Inside the facility, a laboratory mouse—C57BL/6—becomes the last hope.
The game combines Marble Madness-style physics-based balance mechanics with a unique temperature–speed control system. Through immersive environmental storytelling and sticker collection, it pays tribute to pioneering space animals while introducing knowledge about Mars. Players control the mouse-ball as it navigates across a complex control room desktop, gaining the powers of mysterious animal predecessors. By mastering inertia, momentum, and temperature-based speed regulation, players collect animal stickers, unlock archives, gather cheese, and ultimately reach the endpoint to press the button that saves the stranded humans.Mission critical. The mouse must arrive.
Gameplay
Rat-A-Tat is a Marble Madness-inspired puzzle-adventure game. Players take on the role of a space hamster inside an astronaut helmet, exploring levels and overcoming challenges. Along the way, they encounter pioneering animal astronauts and use mechanics such as gravity to trigger mechanisms and progress through each stage.
Videos
Order in Delivery
Six Deities Ensemble / Zhu Yixuan, Wen Yiting, Li Jiayi, Du Hanqi, Yuan Run, Zhang Jian
Overview
In the void of space scattered with black holes and asteroids, conventional spacecraft often struggle to move due to the lack of gravitational anchor points. As a member of an interstellar delivery company, you navigate these cold physical boundaries. In this vast starry sea, you transport not only physical parcels but also hope, knowledge, affection, and even “destruction triggers” that could determine the fate of entire planets. You will witness countless stories of science and hope quietly unfolding between isolated outposts. Behind every delivery lies a profound choice, and your actions will shape the ultimate outcome of these stories, igniting the spark of civilization in this frozen network of cosmic logistics.
Gameplay
This game is a mechanics-focused title that combines physics simulation with spatial projection, with core gameplay revolving around gravitational balance:
1. Gravity Path Construction: Players must accurately place “gravity hubs” in specific zones, using the law of universal gravitation and slingshot effects to artificially create gravitational pathways, guiding cargo across the spatial abyss.
2. Strategic Trajectory Planning: By combining spatial projection with resource allocation, players design optimal transport routes. Successful paths provide crucial support for expanding operations across larger regions of the galaxy.
3. Core Narrative Loop: Following the loop of “Receive Order → Understand Story → Make Choices → Witness Outcome,” every decision you make genuinely affects the course of the game world.
4. Fun Scientific Exploration: The game features detailed planetary encyclopedias and explanations of physics concepts, allowing players to appreciate the grand logic of the universe while planning their trajectories.
Videos
Chrono of the Sundial
Six Busy Stars / Mei Yuexi, Xie Xiyu, Cai Jiayan, Luo Chuyuan, Shen Yiting, Lu Yitian
Overview
Chrono of the Sundial is a puzzle game themed around ancient astronomical instruments—specifically the sundial—and the “Twenty-Four Solar Terms.” Set in the year 3347, players join an ancient astronomy research project and operate a newly unearthed sundial.
Inside the sundial is sealed a small jade dragon. Once a guardian of the Twenty-Four Solar Terms, the dragon absorbed their spiritual energy into its own body, losing its memory in the process and becoming trapped within the sundial for centuries. The player’s mission is to guide the jade dragon through the sundial’s projected world, collecting the lost energies of the solar terms at each point, gradually recovering the millennia-old memories of a civilization buried by time.
Gameplay
In the game, players can adjust the sun’s azimuth and altitude to change the length and direction of the sundial’s shadow and other objects, effectively building paths to guide the jade dragon to different solar term points. During exploration, you can also use the ability to “alter time,” bringing new life to static objects. Passing through solar term points unlocks new tools and abilities, and along the journey, helpful companions may offer assistance. Observe the environment carefully and use your skills wisely to help the jade dragon gather the energies of the solar terms and lift the ancient seal.
Videos
CASSINI：BEFORE THE FALL
SIX / Tang Shuqing, Yu Mutao, Bai Yunlin, Wang Yifei, Chen Sirui, Chen Hanyu
Overview
In 2017, the Cassini spacecraft was running low on fuel, beginning its final mission—referred to by NASA as the “Grand Finale.” During its last 22 orbits, it would pass through the extremely narrow gap between Saturn and its rings for the first time, make the closest-ever observations of the planet, and ultimately plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere to prevent contaminating its moons.
The game recreates this irreversible countdown from Cassini’s first-person perspective, allowing players to experience the tightening orbits, increasingly fragile systems, and continuous data transmissions. Through this, players confront the choices of exploration, risk, and scientific ethics—witnessing not only how humanity reaches new frontiers but also how it bids farewell.
Gameplay
Within this irreversible countdown, players must plan flybys and adjust orbits, completing interactions such as photo capture, sample collection, and signal alignment to advance chapters and trigger narrative flashbacks.
Videos
Tidal Survivors
Dogs Bark in the Alley / Fang Yan, Zhang Qianheng, Hong Yingqi, Guo Yangni, Shi Yajing, Xiao Xianyue
Overview
Tidal Survivors is a construction and simulation game themed around tides and extraterrestrial exploration. Players assume the role of an interstellar exploration team arriving at Xunxi Planet—a world whose civilization once developed around tidal forces but vanished after a catastrophic event. Guided by the planet’s relic, the super-device known as the “Tidal Clock,” players follow the rhythm of the tides, constructing facilities and developing islands. While exploring the planet, they work to restore the tidal civilization.
Throughout the journey, players will encounter islands with unique styles, build distinctive structures of civilization, and learn astronomical knowledge related to tides and universal gravitation.
Videos
Aftermath
Out of Time, Into the Rainbow / Han Jiayi, Wang Yihan, Xu Mengyu, Wang Yanzhen, Luo Ruiyang, Liu Kehan
Overview
Aftermath is a side-scrolling 2.5D narrative exploration game. Players take on the role of an explorer who has accidentally crash-landed on a ruinous planet with abnormal gravity, collecting data fragments to gradually uncover the truth behind an energy disaster caused by the genius scientist Z.
The story progresses through cinematic sequences, retraceable events, and research documents. With an art style that blends apocalyptic atmosphere and geometric light-and-shadow design, the game delivers a unique puzzle-solving experience. Ultimately, players’ choices lead to one of two endings—Reconciliation or Transcendence—offering a profound reflection on technology, trauma, and civilization.
Videos
Solar System Special
Don’t Play with Abstraction / Lu Chang, Shen Canyu, Bai Ruilian, Liao Zixin, Wan Yiming, Xiong Yuhan
Overview
This game is a simulation and management title set against the narrative backdrop of the solar system. Players run a planet-themed beverage shop to earn resources and rewards, and through management and exploration, gradually unlock hidden storylines that reveal the universe’s secrets behind the shop. By integrating the management system with narrative progression, the gameplay itself becomes a key vehicle for unfolding the story.
Videos
Cool Yeah, There’s a Battle Too / Wang Congrui, Bian Wenjing, Han Zhexin, Chen Sitong, Li Yifan, Tang Kaifeng
Overview
Humanity does not cease its yearning for the stars because of failure. The game encourages players to recognize that the successes of space exploration are built upon countless experimental experiences. Set in a post-catastrophe wasteland after a massive celestial disaster, the ruling authorities promote religion and fear the skies, banning all astronomical research. The protagonist searches for pre-disaster spacecraft and technological achievements while also working to dispel the populace’s fear of the heavens.
Gameplay
The combat system allows players to control various properties of particles, encouraging experimentation. By editing particle attributes, players can create different chain reactions. These mechanics can also be applied to rocket construction, where items carried by the player can be mounted on rockets to produce effects such as combustion and turbo boosts. The particle collision system calculates damage based on physics, and can also compute rocket thrust.
Videos
Interstellar Echo: Alien Decoder
LESSI / Zhang Jinghong, Lin Yufeng, Wang Yikai, Xu Anna, Xu Zhuangchen, Liu Yizhen, Zhu Foqing
Overview
Echoes of Humanity (EOH) is a narrative puzzle game that reflects on the essence of human civilization from an outsider’s perspective. Players assume the role of an archaeologist from an alien civilization who, in the distant future, discovers the “Golden Record” launched aboard Voyager in 1977, floating in deep space. Due to the passage of time, the data on the record is damaged. Your task is to restore its sounds, images, and music fragments within a constructed virtual environment, using interactive cues, puzzle-solving, and binary decoding.
As the restoration progresses, players gradually come to understand human emotions, art, science, and memory. Through the process of decoding, they develop a cross-temporal empathy with this long-lost civilization. The game is not only about data restoration—it is an immersive inquiry into what it means to be human, allowing players to rediscover humanity through the eyes of an alien scholar.
Gameplay
The core objective for players in the game is to decode the damaged and incomplete fragments of the Golden Record. To achieve this, players must explore various themed environments within the game and complete the essential tasks set in each scene. Every level is inspired by the content of the Golden Record, aiming to reconstruct its essence and spirit.
Players interact with different game characters and complete various mini-games, gradually “restoring” the record fragments, advancing the storyline, and gaining a deeper understanding of the stories and meanings behind the Golden Record. As the game progresses, players will ultimately complete the full decoding process, not only piecing together the complete Golden Record but also helping the alien civilization comprehend the core spirit of Earth and human civilization.
Videos
Path of Stars
Two Huangs / Huang Zhenhui, Huang Xiupin
Overview
In the universe of PATH OF STARS, a mysterious anomaly has shattered the constellations, scattering fragments of stars across the galaxy. As the stars vanish, darkness begins to spread, threatening to engulf the entire cosmos and erase the light that once guided countless worlds. A lone traveler rises to the challenge, taking on the mission to recover the lost fragments and restore the broken constellations before it is too late. Each star reclaimed brings hope back to the sky, pushing back the darkness and gradually restoring balance and harmony to the universe.
Gameplay
Players must find the fastest and most efficient routes to collect the required stars within a limited time. Each level features multiple paths, shifting platforms, black holes, and hazardous obstacles, testing both reaction speed and strategic planning. Players are expected to learn through repeated attempts, gradually mastering routes and timing. Stars serve not only as objectives but also as survival resources—failing to collect them results in reduced visibility and loss of health. After gathering enough stars, players must complete constellation puzzles to progress. Skillful movement, wise decision-making, and precise control will be richly rewarded.
Videos
When the vast universe meets extraordinary imagination, and the mysteries of the cosmos merge with game mechanics, ten astronomy-themed educational games—carefully crafted by students of the College of Design and Innovation—come together here as a vibrant dialogue with the stars. Using creativity as their vessel and technology as their sail, these works transform distant planets, enigmatic black holes, and the wonders of gravity into interactive experiences that can be observed, explored, and immersed in. Each project offers a unique interpretation of astronomical knowledge, carrying a sincere curiosity about the cosmos and paying tribute to humanity’s enduring spirit of exploration.
The sky is boundless, and exploration never ends. May these works, filled with passion and insight, illuminate more eyes that gaze toward the stars—bringing science closer and keeping curiosity alive. May every viewer who reaches this point rediscover their sense of wonder for the universe, and continue, in the days ahead, to set forth bravely toward the vast sea of stars.
