From 1968's Night of the Living Dead by George Romero to each week鈥檚 episode of The Walking Dead, zombies are a perennial pop culture favourite. And with the Halloween season upon us, you鈥檙e probably seeing even more references to zombies 鈥� even in the Dal Libraries.
No, you can鈥檛 blame zombies in the library for why you didn鈥檛 turn in last week鈥檚 paper on time 鈥� but you could have zombies in the library to thank for your superior researching skills when your next assignment comes in ahead of schedule.
Enter , a video game in which you try to survive the zombie apocalypse by successfully applying search strategies. A passion project created by data librarian Julie Marcoux, the game combines a zombie-themed, chose-your-own adventure storyline using Boolean search strategies to play the game.
Play the game:
Players start out learning that zombies have reached their city and are asked to help a character named 脡vangeline build a creature made of body parts of the dead to use in the fight against the zombies. The creature can鈥檛 be reanimated without a defibrillator, so the player has to make a decision 鈥� will they go to a pharmacy to find a defibrillator, find a weapon to defend themselves, or find 脡vangeline鈥檚 friend who may have a defibrillator in their dorm room?
鈥淭he choices you make will have an impact on the overall story,鈥� says Julie. 鈥淭he number of survivors and the endings change depending on how well the player does with the search strategies.鈥�
Scarily effective Boo-lean strategies
Julie has been an academic librarian since 2011. After about a year in the role, she noticed a pattern 鈥� many students had difficulty when it came to searching for information.
In particular, they were struggling with Boolean searches 鈥� combining keywords with AND, OR and NOT to produce more relevant results.
(For example, if you search museum AND Halifax, the results would be limited to documents that contain both of the keywords. Searching for museum OR Halifax would include documents that contained either of those terms, while a search for museum NOT Halifax gets results about musems with no reference to Halifax.)
听鈥淸It] works like math,鈥� explains Julie. 鈥淚n math, you use operators to put numbers in relation to one another. In Boolean searching, you instead use operators that work with words. It鈥檚 a phenomenon that鈥檚 been recorded in librarian literature 鈥� digital natives [people who鈥檝e grown up with the Internet in their lives] don鈥檛 always have the strongest searching skills.鈥�
Bringing the game to life
And so, in her free time, Julie developed a game to teach students how to become better library researchers. She started working on the game in 2012, before she started working at Dal. As time allowed, she鈥檇 work on the game, eventually putting in hundreds of hours before completing it in 2018.
听
鈥淚鈥檝e always liked doing little bits of light programming, but I鈥檇 never made a game before so I had to learn how to do that. Then I had to put together a story, different paths, different endings, as well as finding the art and the music. It was my idea but I had help.鈥�
This included assistance from her family and her partner, who created the original artwork in the game. Some of the characters are even based on a few of her 黑料吃瓜网librarian colleagues, who gamely posed for photos that were then sketched into digital art. (Her colleagues helped test the game, too.)
Julie introduces many students to the game during her classroom visits, but she hopes students will also find the game fun enough to play outside of the classroom.
鈥淚 would really like for Dal students to start playing the game and I鈥檇 love to see universities across Canada and even the world try out the game 鈥� I have made it open access so that kind of sharing is possible,鈥� says Julie.
Zombool can be played in English or French and is accessible for the visually impaired. With three possible paths and four possible endings, it can also be played multiple times, and for repeat players, there鈥檚 a little humour to go along with the gory theme. 鈥淚f the player decides to replay the game, they get the same story options, but are given the opportunity to add more kittens,鈥� says Julie.
The game is or you can access the game on the computers at the Halifax locations of the Dal Libraries (except for the 鈥渆xpress鈥� computers).
Julie is proud of the game, which is a product of both her love for video games and helping students become better researchers.
鈥淚t鈥檚 really nice when a student can do a search and suddenly they get relevant results. They鈥檙e no longer trying random searches just hoping to find what they need,鈥� says Julie.