Knowing the Art History with Croquets in

With The Quelícera Mansion game we invite the infantile-juvenile public to find out new ways to see the digital means, stimulating the detailed observation and highlighting the poetic view. Its investigative game structure stimulates to decrease the look acceleration, even though operating in a digital environment - lebeled by accelerated speed.

The game images singularize themselves by used technical procedures: from the pencil draw and watercolor painting to the book fragment inclusion of traditional artistic painting. This is the main pedagogical strategy adopted on the game elaboration: the image appropriations of Art History. In the game, educators and educated interact themselves with the books in a mystery plot. Firstly, they rebuild a portrait done by Arcimboldo; secondly, they find out who is the favorite painter of the Dwarf character; after they disclose a puzzle created from Baldung's allegories; and at the end they talk to the Misanthrope of Bruegel or persuade the Ciplope of Redon. To investigate the Mansion is just the beginning of an incursion on books, artists and theme of Art History that must be deepened by the educator with the aid of this site.

Go to the index (in Portuguese).

 

 

The game starts with the introduction animation followed by the chosen scream of the character (in Portuguese). Each of the three characters that can be adopted by the player leads to a distinct way to the game - as much by the mission that must be held as by inhabitants with whom we can talk, challenges that need to solve and short ways that can be used. In a general sense, your mission consists in achieving two objects and, with them, to realise an action. What are the objects, how to get them and what to do with them are questions that you need to answer, investigating the Mansion - a total of 16 main ambient (hall, dinning room, ballroom, kitchen, loft, cloister, storage room, library, bathroom, den, basement, dungeon and 4 bedrooms) and others 45 secondary ambient (such as corridors, stairs, alcoves, waiting-rooms, etc.).

Interconnecting the lanes found, you will be able to find out the secrets of the Mansion and the witches fought by Quelícera (in Portuguese) in a far-off time. Done that, you will need to be fearless enough to face the catastrophic final game.

On the first ambient of the Mansion, the Hall, there are two very important elements:
first, a note left by the character named Rafael, saying which is the mission of the adopted character by the player; second, the first page of the scrapbook of the old cloister, Tufik (in Portuguese), that narrates the Mansion story and the evilness done by Quilícera. The other eight pages are spread by other ambient.

Investigating the Mansion you will encounter hauling objects (for example, a key hung on the character's clothe of a painting in the library, when hauling it to the door of the ambient it is allowed to open it), other static things; some are animated when clicked, others are not; some has the practical function for the character mission, others do not. To get into some ambient you will have to face small proves; for others, the passage is facilitated. It is necessary to find out secret mechanisms, objects well-kept, blurred doors ... and do not forget to check the navigation every time it is needed (clicking on the image of your character, on the right corner of the scream, the bar opens). But, be careful on the choice of the objects in which you are going to click! Your character can faint or even die (to go back to the beginning of the game and lose the objects already achieved).

Enjoy yourself!

 

During the game realisation process, it was done tests with students from third to eighth grade of Basic Teaching (among 9 and 14 years old) from Florianópolis/SC, in different educational contexts - private and public schools, in the urban and semi-rural environment, with children that had daily access to computer and others that did not. The majority of them could solve the Quelícera mystery. The variations got, then, to a point of the game narrative comprehension and on the time that each player took to finish the mission of his/her character.

 

Firstly, the game is a amusing and educative space from the poetic view. For including images of our artistic tradition it has pedagogical potential for the Art History teaching, something that is only consolidated with the mediation held by the educator. Therefore, we offer this Educator Site, giving the necessary historic-graphical support for the deepening of the inquiring and looks that have come up with the game. Here, it is not presented ready activities to be applied after and during the game. On the contrary, the site works as a research space for each educator to elaborate his/her own pedagogical incursions by the game. We invite you educator to publish and read here pedagogical incursion reports with The Quelícera Mansion game.