Hackerteen Prototype is a t-learning application for interactive digital TV that exercises the logical and mathematical thinking of the viewer. The game is starred by the hero Yago and the villain Impius. Yago is an instructor of Hackerteen and uses his technical knowledge to protect one of the Internet primary DNS servers. Impius is a cracker and wants to crash this DNS server in order to stop the Internet. This challenge takes the form of a card game.

The game has simple rules. It is composed of a card deck with 25 cards (5 copies of 5 numbered cards from 1 to 5). Each player starts with 5 random cards. The viewer takes the role of Yago and can view only the 5 cards of the hero. He plays against the computer, which controls Impius.

The characters are placed in the screen in a board with 23 positions. Yago is the first to play, and thereafter Impius and him alternate their turns. On its turn to play, a character uses a card and walks the number of positions indicated by the chosen card. When a player uses a card that indicates the exact number of positions to reach his rival, he is acting as an attacker of a duel.

A duel is an intellectual challenge in the Internet field. The attacker shows all the cards he owns with the exact distance to the rival. If he owns more cards of that value than the defender, he wins the duel. To avoid losing, the defender must show the same number of cards the attacker showed. In this case, the defender is the next to play and both players get cards from the deck to complete a hand of 5 cards again.

There are some additional rules. A character can never use a card with a value greater than his distance to the rival. If a character can't use any cards of his hand, he loses automatically. When the deck goes empty (the number of cards in the deck is displayed in the bottom-right corner of the screen), the player with more positions walked wins. In case of a tie, Impius wins.

The game winner is the character that wins three challenges. The game score is displayed in the screen.

Hackerteen Institutional Video
Marcelo Marques & Rodolfo Gobbi
4Linux

Characters & Design
Marcelo Marques e Rodolfo Gobbi
4Linux

Interactive application & design
Carlos de Salles Soares Neto
TeleMidia Lab - PUC-Rio

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