BountyHunter is a new game developed in the Wolfram Language that makes extensive use of the outstanding geographics capabilities of the language as a means of teaching geography in (what I hope is) an exciting gameplay format.
The attached WL presentation gives a complete description of the game and its many features. The essence of the game is that you are a bounty hunter, located in a randomly selected U.S. city. Your task is to locate a target in an unknown location. You have a certain amount of time, fuel and credits, which you can use to buy clues as to the target's whereabouts. The game charts the player's progress from city to city, providing information about the player's current location and offering clues that will help them decide where to travel to next. On locating the target the player acquires a bounty of credits, which varies according to the difficulty of the assignment. Game data is stored and can be retrieved to show the total credits amassed by the player, the cities visited, the assignments successfully completed and an assessment of the player's efficacy as a bounty hunter (which is based on the efficiency of the searches conducted).
I have played the game many times myself and learned a great deal about US geography in the process. It's not just about geography though - it's as much about logic and reasoning. If you like logic puzzles or strategy games I think you will enjoy playing BountyHunter. It's also one of the few games you can allow your kids to play, knowing that it has been designed to educate them, not just entertain them.
My original intention was to use WL to build a prototype of the game, and perhaps later convert it into something like C++ for production. But the WL version plays much better than I had imagined and I began to wonder if it could be offered via a Wolfram Private Cloud. After extensive consultation with Wolfram Tech. Consulting, it became clear that the Cloud version of WL doesn't offer the same capabilities as the desktop version and a complete redevelopment would be required. Its a major undertaking to re-engineer all this in something like C++ and I really don't have the time. Perhaps someone in the community would like to take on the challenge.
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