How to play

I'm sorry, I'm getting a lot of "Server replied: You have prepared your container incorrectly. The isotope I provided you has unfortunately been destroyed." no matter what I try to enter.

What you need to do is predict what isotope you will be receiving. All three parts (the mass, the charge and the symbol) must be correct. For example, if it says it will give you an isotope with mass 18 and 8 protons, you look up that this is oxygen (symbol capital O), so you enter 18 on top, 8 on the bottom, and O on the right. Then the isotope should appear in your container at the bottom in the middle.

Unfortunately its so text heavy that it just doesn't appeal very much to me and many others I'm sure as well. It requires you to really think, and people don't want to.
But it seems to be a pretty nice twist off the theme

This game is educational, but that unfortunately doesn't make it much fun to play.

So admittedly the motivation to play this game was a bit lower than usual for me since it's very educational and it's been a long long time since I've taken a class on this subject. But I decided to give it a fair chance. I googled "isotope notation" and pulled up a periodic table and got to learning.

And you know what, after getting through the initial hump, I thought it was pretty interesting and informative! I did run out of time to play the game, but I got through the beta minus decay level. So although it might not be the next Fortnite, I can definitely imagine this being used in a classroom.

Maybe I would add a quick section at the very beginning about that isotope notation. You do explain what an isotope is but not the notation with the two numbers and the element. (Actually I am doubting myself, maybe I am misremembering this part.)

I think you achieved your goals for this jam. You should be very proud!

Actually, I went back to check and you did explain the notation. I just missed it. It might still be good to show an example of it rather than just describe the notation in a paragraph. It would make it a tad less wordy too. I think there's a lot of potential for this as a learning tool with a little bit of polish. :)

@diego-escalante Thanks! Yes, I agree it would have been nicer to have the notation in the intro. Actually, it'd probably be better to have an example in the intro. One reason I didn't do that was that the method for writing it is currently very annoying; it's formatted using html and css, and that's really not suitable for this. Of course I could have written some functions to make it easier (to generate the unreadable html), but mostly due to the time constraints I decided to focus on other things instead. But I certainly agree that it'd be an improvement. :)

As for all the text, as @fonkin mentioned: I had wanted to present it as dialog, like a visual novel. But I also didn't have time to do that. I might still do it later, because I'm pretty happy with the result so far. With some polishing I think it should be usable for teaching.

I recommend not having the player run into a wall of text. Reading a bunch of text can be done with a book. Video games are different from books and it's important to leverage that difference. They have interactive feedback loops and simulation. In a book one reads about things happening, but in a video game one directly observes it happening and interacts with it. Your third goal might conflict with what would make for a good educational game. Schools have their set curriculum and focus on passing tests. However, I think keeping the mindset of "show, don't tell" would go a long way.

I also recommend watching Jonathan Blow's talk about video games and the future of education.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWFScmtiC44