Daniel Tamaru, Sean Fitzgerald, Jon Gautsch, Maribeth Rauh

Robo Dog is an interactive game that teaches children basic programming concepts while trying to navigate Danno, the kid-friendly canine, though a vibrant dream land to find his way to a patriotic spaceship that will take him back home. Danno is unlike any ordinary dog: he must program himself in order to perform actions such as stepping, jumping, kicking, and turning. However, he needs the help of the user to give him the correct code that will take him to safety. When the program is run, the user sees a screen that shows a token bin of colorful code tokens on the bottom, an empty left sidebar that is the workspace for building code, a “Run” button, and a game world in the top right portion of the screen containing the side-scrolling video game. To start building a program, the user must click and drag the code tokens which snap into place in the workspace. “Loop” tokens will repeat whatever action is contained within them for the amount of times specified by the user. To change the amount of times the action is done, the user simply clicks on the number on the begin loop token after it is placed in the workspace to increment the number. Unless a loop token is used, each of the action tokens causes Danno to perform the action only one time. The “Step” token causes Danno to perform a walking animation and move forward, the “Jump” token causes Danno to jump forward into the air, the “Turn” token causes Danno to do a little dance by turning 360 degrees, and the “Kick” token causes Danno to kick whatever is in front of him. Using these tokens, the user must move forward through the world, jump over barbed wire walls, and kick enemies. Note that the only way to get past a barbed wire wall is by jumping over it and the only way to get past an enemy is to kick it before trying to move past it. Our world contains two barbed wire walls and one giant space worm that spontaneously appears out of a space portal.
When the user is done building their code, they can press the “Run” button to “compile” their code. The program then interprets what the user has input and will make Danno perform the appropriate actions as specified by the user. If Danno reaches the patriotic spaceship at the end of the level, the user is successful and is shown a congratulatory scene. If Danno does not reach his home and is killed in the middle of this strange land, the user is shown a loser scene.