Inclusion Bridges

App Info

Price: Free
AppStore User Rating:

Overview

Inclusion Bridges is an awareness tool that offers a simple video game to familiarize players with social problems such as religious discrimination, racism and violence as they also become familiar with solutions such as social programs, education programs, and inclusionary artwork. The game is built around the main character building bridges over gaps to turn the “monsters” into inclusion strategies, which is highly symbolic of the work that the consortium that has created the app, Erasmus and the “Social Inclusion Out of the Box” project, an international partnership representing a number of countries.

Please note that developers of this __app recommend that children under the age of 17 not download or use it due to unrestricted web access.

Features include:

• Representation of exclusionary monsters such as racism, unemployment and poverty
• Representation of inclusion strategies such as school education programs, community artwork and so forth
• Simple video game to represent changing exclusionary monsters with inclusion strategies
• Contact information for supporting groups from the various partner countries

Quality

Inclusion Bridges is a quality app that allows players to participate in a simple video game to raise awareness of the issues causing exclusion around the world. The video game is symbolic, requiring players to build bridges over gaps by touching the screen to lengthen their bridge so it is just the right length to cover the gap. The app really needs more clear directions for users to make the game a bit more fun-I had quite a time understanding exactly what was needed to complete a level. The English translation has multiple grammar errors that make it difficult to understand the app’s purpose, as well.

Education

This app is not really intended to be educational in the academic sense, but rather a tool to raise global awareness of societal problems that force individuals and groups into marginalized positions. Each level lists three such problems, such as age discrimination, violence, and lack of education. When a player successfully builds a bridge, the “monster” turns into an inclusion strategy, such as intercultural activities and professional education. However, the inclusion strategies and the names of the problems only appear at the beginning of each level. After that, they are represented by stylized monster figures of different colors. An awareness tool should probably keep the target information in front of the user more consistently.

Entertainment

The challenge of Inclusion Bridges is to build bridges of the correct sizes to bridge the gaps but not to be too large or small. The bridges are built vertically by touching the screen, then they fall into place when the finger is lifted, and if not too long or too short, allow the main character to cross and proceed to the next area needing a bridge. It is very difficult to judge when the vertical line is the correct length for the horizontal gap. If it is too long or too short, the monster will crash the bridge, ending the level and posting a large “FAIL” sign with an option to repeat the level or go on anyway. The game play itself does not change between the 11 levels. In other words, many people would either give up in frustration or become bored with the limited nature of the play.

Value

This is a free app, but is not likely to offer much in the way of fun for kids. It also does not do a very good job of its intended purpose of raising awareness of social injustices for adults. As such, developers should include more information about HOW to address the problems listed, rather than simply offering names of types of programs that could eventually offer solutions. It would be nice, also, to see more information about how each of the participating countries are addressing these problems, especially since each level professes to be from a different country, and the app is available in eight different languages.

Child Friendliness

Developers of this app recommend that children under the age of 17 not download nor play this app due to unprotected internet links.

• NO social media
• NO 3rd party ads
• NO in-app purchase
• YES unprotected internet links