Case study · Educational game

Monkey Business

An educational team leadership game

A four-month project commissioned by Excited, the Centre for Excellent IT Education in Norway. Monkey Business is a 2D point-and-click management game where players delegate tasks, decide how to run meetings and apply the team leadership theories they have learnt. We did the programming in Unity and C#; the art and story were created by a collaborator.

Play it here Play on itch.io

Client: Excited – Centre for Excellent IT Education
Published: August 2024, after four months of work
Platform: Web browser (WebGL), desktop and mobile
What we did: Programming in Unity and C#
Award: Best Digital Student Game, 19th European Conference on Games Based Learning

The full game, right here in your browser. It’s about a 115 MB download, so it only loads when you press play. Open in a new tab

The brief

Excited wanted a serious game that helps university students practise leading a team, not just read about it. The theory had to show up in what players do, so that a good leadership decision visibly helps the team and a poor one costs them.

It also had to be easy to hand out: no installs, no accounts, and playable on whatever device a student has with them.

Monkey Business team meeting with five monkey employees around a conference table — Team meetings are where players choose a leadership approach.

Gameplay: running an office of monkeys

Players take charge of a small team, give out work and keep an eye on how everyone is coping as the days go by.

A short personality quiz sets the player’s own skills in programming, art, design and audio.
Full character customization, then hiring a team whose skills fit the project.
Tasks are dragged onto employees from an in-game laptop. Too many at once and stress climbs while productivity drops.
Team meetings and executive meetings check progress and move the story forward.

The office with the player’s desk and monkey employees, each with a mood face and progress bar

A monkey employee at their office desk with a stress face and task progress bar

Theory built into the rules

The game is based on real team effectiveness theories: the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Model (1974) and the Four Leadership Styles of Situational Leadership II® in a Group or Team Context (1969).

The team moves through four development stages, and each stage calls for a different meeting approach: structuring, resolving, collaborating or validating.
The right approach lowers stress and moves the team up a stage, and every stage makes the team more productive.
In-depth optional tutorials and examples drawn from real-life scenarios.

Laurel: winner of Best Digital Student Game at the 19th European Conference on Games Based Learning — Winner of Best Digital Student Game at the 19th European Conference on Games Based Learning.

Programming: what we built

A simulation where every employee’s skills, workload and stress decide how fast their tasks get done.
A branching dialogue system, with conversations stored as assets so the story could be written and changed without touching code.
A day and time system you can pause and speed up, plus weather, a team overview with statistics, and colour themes for the in-game laptop.
A character creator that builds each monkey from layered sprite parts.
Separate volume controls, adjustable text speed and a WebGL build that works on phones as well as computers.

Built with

Unity C# WebGL Universal Render Pipeline DOTween ScriptableObjects

Programming by AEDANI Studio. Art and story by a collaborator.

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