Pirate Ships, Giant Parrots and Famous Lincoln Level Crossings – The Brayford Pool Campus as You’ve Never Seen It Before
If you take a virtual trip to Lincoln’s Brayford Pool today, you’re sure of big surprise. From pirate ships and giant parrots to duelling university professors and dancing students, the University of Lincoln’s city centre campus has been reimagined in a new and unique video game – University on Lincoln Island.
In the fantasy video game, the Brayford Pool Campus becomes Lincoln Island – a fictional pirate island, but with very familiar buildings, landmarks and people for visitors to meet.
University on Lincoln Island is the brainchild of Dr Chris Headleand, Director of Teaching and Learning at the School of Computer Science. What started off as a personal project while on paternity leave is now an exciting new fantasy video game ready for public launch.
Dr Headleand has reimagined the University of Lincoln’s campus to give gamers and new visitors an extraordinary and immersive experience. In the game, each of the University’s buildings are exactly to scale and in the correct locations, as are all paths, and even the marina, but everything has a fantasy pirate twist – for example the Sports Centre Colosseum. Gamers travel around the island, meeting people and completing exciting quests.
Dr Headleand hopes the game will help current and prospective students to visit and learn about the University of Lincoln from the comfort of their living rooms. He said: “At the moment, we are all having to self-isolate and stay at home, but for many of us the Brayford Campus feels like a part of our home and we miss being there. Many prospective students will also have hoped to visit the campus before coming here for their studies, but with the current government advice they are unable to do that.
“Through this game they can at least take a tour, get a sense of where everything is, and meet some of the people they’ll be learning from and alongside!”
The full story is on the University of Lincoln website, where you can also download and play the game: https://www.lincoln.ac.uk/news/2020/05/1606.asp