Kids relive history with free role-playing game
— -- Black History Month can come alive for older elementary and middle school kids in a new free role-playing video game called Mission U.S.: Flight to Freedom.
Players step into the shoes of Lucy King, a 14-year-old girl enslaved at a plantation in Kentucky in 1848. By assuming Lucy's identity and making her decisions, kids experience life on a southern plantation and what it was like to become a runaway slave.
Playable in a browser or by downloading the game, this game is found at www.mission-us.org. This is the second of two free historic missions produced by public television station THIRTEEN in conjunction with New York's WNET.
This choose-your-own-adventure is delivered in five parts, bookended with a prologue and epilogue. It is fascinating enough for kids to play at home, but it also includes extensive teaching materials making it perfect to be explored in a school setting.
Developed by a group of historians and educators, and funded in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Humanities, this game makes history seem relevant to kids by letting them see events unfold through the eyes of a historic peer. By becoming Lucy, kids learn about slavery conditions, the Underground Railway and political opinions about slavery including abolitionists and other anti-slavery groups such as the Free Soilers and Colonization groups. They will also find out about the Fugitive Slave Law and other laws of that time and why this conflict eventually escalated into a war.
Players meet Lucy while she is working on the King Plantation in Kentucky. When the foreman unjustly charges her with burning down the smokehouse, she faces being severely beaten or sold; so she decides to run away. Leaving her mother and little brother Jonah, Lucy finds her way to the Underground Railroad and eventually makes her way to Ohio. While Ohio was considered a "free" state, Lucy discovers that she is still at risk from slave trackers. Nonetheless, she bravely joins the abolitionist cause and puts herself at risk of being recaptured as a slave.
Presented through a series of scenes which use text, video and maps, you make decisions for Lucy. The game plays out based on your decisions; so it is different each time you play. Not only do you make choices about what Lucy does, but you also determine her behavior. These decisions determine what "badges" you earn representing the values, traits and skills of the Lucy you are developing. The badges become important during the epilogue, because you will use the badges you have earned to create an ending narrative for Lucy.
Some of the decisions you will face as Lucy include deciding what to take when she leaves the plantation. Should she steal? Pack extra food? Should she stay on the well-traveled roads or try to go it alone in wooded areas? What should she say if stopped by a slave catcher? Later in the game you will have to make decisions about helping others. Can you find a free man's papers that some dishonest slave catcher tore up? Can you persuade established, credible citizens to testify that a free man isn't an escaped slave?
The game also does a great job of increasing vocabulary. Key concepts and difficult historic terms are introduced by highlighting them in yellow. If kids click on them to learn their definitions, they earn "Smartwords" which will increase Lucy's literacy skills and help her to escape slavery.
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