Game & Simulation Design
for Space Apps
تصميم الألعاب والمحاكاة
Leave with a playable spec.
A 2-hour workshop · NASA Space Apps Cairo 2026
Marwan Ayyad
Game designer · your host for the next 120 minutes
Hello. I'm Marwan, and here's our next 2 hours.
By the end, your team has a one-minute game spec ready to build.
Why games, not dashboards
The core loop
How winners did it
The 48-hour playbook
Live demo
You build a spec
Rules & questions
If the player has no meaningful choice, it's not a game.
It's just a chore.
Same Mars data. Two experiences.
A dashboard
You read it. Nothing you do changes anything.
Teaching numbers, not live data.
A simulation: 3 sols of storm
Each sol, the storm drains warmth and oxygen. Pick one move:
Why a choice beats a chart
Fast feedback
Every move answers back within a second.
Failure is safe
Crash the habitat, press reset, try a smarter plan.
Decisions stick
People remember what they chose, not what they scrolled past.
Every game runs one loop
Action
The player makes a choice.
Response
The rules change the world's state.
Feedback
The player sees what happened, at once.
…and the feedback sets up the next choice.
Step 1 · Action: give the player a dilemma
No dilemma
"Press Launch to launch the rocket."
There's only one sensible move, so there's nothing to decide.
A real trade-off
"Launch now in bad weather, or wait a day and lose the orbital window?"
Both options cost something. That's a choice.
Step 2 · Response: rules anyone can read
A rule is one line of cause and effect
Same choice, same result, every time. No dice, no black-box AI.
If the player can't predict the rule, they can't plan, so they can't really choose.
Rule card
- Heaters on → power −25, warmth +25
- Every sol in the storm → warmth −20, oxygen −20
- Any meter hits 0 → mission over
Step 3 · Feedback: show it within a second
Colour
Green is safe. Yellow is a warning. Red is trouble. No reading needed.
Sound
A beep on every change, an alarm before failure.
Numbers
Show the exact change: "oxygen −20". Players learn the rules from it.
Try it: one dial, one loop
Drawn 6× steeper. Drag to turn.
Action
Pick an angle and commit.
Response
The rules will run here.
Feedback
You'll see the outcome here.
Simplified corridor: −5.5° to −7.5°.
Turn a challenge into variables
The challenge text
"Design a base that keeps a crew alive at the lunar south pole: power is limited during the long night, temperatures drop sharply, and oxygen must be produced on site."
Example written for this workshop.
What to pull out
- Resources that run out: power, oxygen
- Threats that push back: cold, the long night
- The goal: survive until sunrise
Keep it to 2–4 variables
1 variable
Too shallow. There's nothing to trade off, so it's a quiz.
3 variables
The sweet spot. Enough tension for real choices, small enough to finish in 48 hours.
5+ variables
Scope death. You'll spend Saturday balancing and ship nothing Sunday.
Too heavy to fly?
Get the heaviest satellite to orbit. Too little fuel: you fall back. Too much: stuck on the pad.
Ready?
Real rules, teaching numbers.
Climb the fidelity ladder
Raw science
Datasets and papers. True, but no player can act on them.
Full physics
Exact equations. The 48-hour trap: you'll debug maths all weekend.
Game rules
The science simplified into clear states: safe, warning, critical. Build here.
Zumorroda-X
Egypt · 2025
Global winner, Art & Technology Award
Challenge: NASA Farm Navigators
What they built
Mini games where you play a farmer on a journey around the world, adapting to heat waves, flooding and other environmental challenges.
Steal this
Put the player in someone's shoes. The data arrives as events they must react to.
Source: NASA, 2025 Space Apps global winners announcement.
TerraTales
Cairo, Egypt · 2024
Global winner, Best Storytelling Award
What they built
An interactive game that encourages players to make eco-friendly choices, showing the climate outcome of acting or not acting.
Steal this
Let each choice show its consequence. The story is what the player caused.
Sources: NASA, 2024 global winners announcement; Universe Magazine.
Eco-Metropolis
Team Innovisionaries
Sharjah, UAE · 2024
Global winner, Most Inspirational Award
What they built
A city-building game where players make urban-planning and resource-management decisions.
Steal this
Scarce resources force real trade-offs. Give the player less than they want.
Source: NASA, 2024 Space Apps global winners announcement.
PureFlow
Brazil · 2025
Global winner, Best Mission Concept Award
What they built
A platform to design and model a space habitat in 3D, then test it against space-weather threats like solar storms.
Steal this
A simulation can be a test bench: build it, stress it, see what breaks.
Source: NASA, 2025 Space Apps global winners announcement.
Egypt has done this twice. With games.
2 of 20
Global winners in 2024–2025 that were Egyptian game teams: TerraTales and Zumorroda-X.
2025's ten winners were picked from 18,860 teams. Source: NASA.
What the winners share
- The player makes a decision
- NASA data lives inside the rules
- One complete loop, finished
Next could be your team.
Four ideas that kill a 48-hour project
Open worlds
Multiplayer
Custom 3D pipelines
Realistic physics engines
Instead: one screen, one loop, one finished level.
Use the tool you already know
Good picks for 48 hours
- Browser (HTML + canvas): judges click a link and play
- Godot: light, free, fast 2D
- Twine: choice stories, no code
- Unity: only if your team already knows it
One rule: track your variables in one shared doc.
Every number and every rule, in one place the whole team can edit.
AI: a fast copilot, a bad scientist
Use AI for
- Writing state and rule code
- Balancing numbers so it's not too easy
- Placeholder art and sounds
Never for
- Inventing the science
- Numbers you can't trace to a NASA source
Check every number it gives you.
Spec in, playable draft out
The AI prototype loop
- Paste your spec after the prompt
- Save the reply as game.html, double-click it
- Play one minute: does the choice matter?
- Ask for one change at a time; paste errors exactly
- Keep every version that works
Prompt starter
"Build one HTML file that runs offline. Use only the rules in my spec; ask before inventing numbers. One button per decision, green-yellow-red meters, show every change in numbers."
Never paste passwords, keys or personal details. Follow your event's AI rules and say what AI made.
The recipe, on a Mars rover
1 · Goal
Send 3 rock samples home before the dust storm hits.
2 · Variables
Battery, dust on the solar panels, samples.
3 · Decision
Drive, drill a rock, or spend a day cleaning the panels?
4 · Feedback
Meters repaint, dust piles up, the storm creeps closer.
Three rocks home before the storm
Teaching numbers, not mission data.
Your turn: design a one-minute game
Pick any NASA challenge. Your team writes one spec. Tonight, AI turns it into a playable draft.
20 min
Design
Fill in the template on the next slide.
10 min
Swap
Trade specs with the next team. They play your rules on paper.
5 min
Revise
Fix the one rule they found confusing.
The one-minute spec
1 · Goal (one sentence)
Keep the lunar crew alive through a 14-day night.
2 · Three variables
- Battery: 0–100 kWh, −5 per day
- Heat: −50 to +25 °C, safe above −10
- Oxygen: 0–100%, −2% per day
3 · Two decisions
- Run heaters: heat +, battery −10
- Run oxygen recycler: oxygen +, battery −15
4 · Rule table
- Battery 0 → heaters off, heat −10 per day
- Heat below −20 for 3 days → mission lost
5 · End state
Day 14, all meters above 0 → crew survives.
Hands on laptops
20:00
Design
Done = one level that plays. Graphics last.
The 5 golden rules
- Design the decisions first
- Put the science inside the rules
- Give feedback within a second
- Simplify the science, openly
- Ship one complete loop
Ask me anything
marwan0.github.io
marwan_ayad@live.com
LinkedIn: in/marwan-ayyad
YouTube: @Marwan-Tech
Facebook: @marwan.ayyad.7