This game is one of the three games I developed for my doctoral dissertation, Using Games as Measurements of Executive Function.
Lava Cave aims to measure young adults’ updating ability or working memory (the ability to temporarily hold a small chunk of information in mind and replace it with new information). In this game, a character runs on a stone platform in a cave infused with lava. Analogous to the N-back task (a standard Psychological test to measure working memory), participants need to keep track of a sequence of letters. At each intersection in the cave, participants see a letter and need to decide whether the letter has appeared 2 letters before. If answering correctly, the character will run to the next intersection and get 20 points. Otherwise, the character will be attacked by a monster and lose 5 points. For playtesting, you can input “10000” as the participant ID.