Our Projects
Campus Paths
Campus Paths is a strategic simulation of university life. Players take on the role of students, juggling academics, social life, work, and wellness, while acquiring skills and filling their curriculum vitae with experiences as they prepare for their careers after graduation. A collaboration with UNB's Career Development and Employment Centre, this board game was designed between 2020 and 2022 by Dr. Preston and Nat Perry (M.Ed., C.C.C.), with playtesting, illustration, and project management by several UNB students
Project AUDE
(coming soon: Fall 2024)
Disaster has struck the UNB Archives and Special Collections! A terrible fire has destroyed all of the incredible photographs, papers, and artifacts that document UNB’s history! But, all is not lost. One hope remains. A secret project (codenamed AUDE - short for Augmented Universal Dimension Engine) the work of a small group of eccentric professors, has unraveled the mystery of time travel!
In this easy-to-learn but strategic card game, you and up to four friends compete against each other as the professors. Stepping forward with a plan to save the university’s history, you send your student research assistants leaping back in time to collect the artifacts and retake the photographs lost in the fire.
Supervise the missions, guide your students through the past, help them choose the best artifacts, and get them home to the present safely. The player whose team collects the most points on these missions will be the winner of the game. Good luck! UNB is counting on you!
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This game is collaboration with UNB Libraries Archives & Special Collections. All of the cards feature photographs, illustrations, and artifacts found in the archives.
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Join the mailing list to be informed when Project AUDE becomes available to purchase.
The Heart to Heart Puzzle Pursuit (March 2024)
Heart to Heart is a partnership program between the Mi'kmaq-Wolastoqey Centre and the International Student Advisor's Office at UNB. This program educates students on Indigenous rights, history, and ways of life and aims to foster respect and cultural understanding between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students.
During the 2023-24 academic year, Resolve partnered with Heart to Heart to design a featured event for March 2024. The Puzzle Pursuit will be a month-long interactive challenge involving riddles, clues, word puzzles and and a campus-wide treasure hunt. Our goal was to meet Heart to Heart's mandate (educating students on Indigenous culture and creating connections, particularly between Indigenous and international students) through the medium of immersive game design.
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Our research revealed that designers who create these immersive experiences for theme parks and alternate reality games recommend designing for three different audience types: waders, swimmers, and divers. With this in mind, we built our puzzles at different difficultly levels, allowing students to participate at their desired level. For the waders, two simple word puzzles released online each week, which students complete to receive a ballot for a weekly prize draw, while also learning about Indigenous culture and issues. Meanwhile, for the swimmers and divers, throughout the month, a multi-step treasure hunt during which students identify and decipher hidden clues to find a grand prize hidden somewhere on campus.
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UNBSU Orientation 2023
Scavenger Hunt
In September 2023, Resolve partnered with the UNB Student Union to takeover the design and coordination of their annual Scavenger Hunt, one of the most popular activities during Orientation Week. Our goal was to create an engaging competition that fostered new friendships by encouraging communication and teamwork amoung the contestants, while also introducing them to campus and familiarizing them with important locations. To do so, we threw the old rulebook out the window and designed an entirely new kind of event, one that featured seven different location-specific puzzles, riddles that revealed the secret locations, a sticker system to track completed puzzles and reward a winner, as well as a side quest involving souvenir 3D-printed "coins" hidden around campus. We had well over 100 students participate, feedback was UNBSU and the contestants was great. Pictured here is the winning team. Congrats, Town House!
Fredericton Tabletop
Game Designers
Dr. Preston founded FTGD to promote tabletop game design in the Fredericton area and provide a space for local designers to playtest their games. Student members of Resolve coordinate the meetings, moderate the group's discord server, and host the community designers on campus twice monthly. If you are interested in becoming involved, please join our discord to find out more. We welcome everyone in the community who has an interest in participating in the game design process, as a playtester, a designer, or both.
UNB Tabletop
Games Library
Resolve curates and manages a collection of over 50 modern board and card games, making them available to all members of the UNB community (faculty, students, and staff) to borrow and play. Dr. Preston is especially interested in helping faculty members identify games for research and teaching and has chosen many of the games in the collection to reflect different research disciplines on campus (history, chemistry, environmental science, nursing, political science, etc.) The collection was initiated as a UNB Teaching and Learning Priority Fund project in 2020.