GOOGLE ARTS & CULTURE

Creating an Educational Game for Google Arts & Culture

The Challenge

Making ancient Mesoamerican culture accessible through gameplay.

Google Arts & Culture wanted to create an educational game that would promote the Mesoamerican collection of the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City.

The challenge was to make ancient Mesoamerican culture accessible, engaging and accurate for a broad audience, particularly younger users.

This meant going beyond a simple digital exhibition. The experience needed to encourage exploration, reward curiosity and help players learn through gameplay rather than passive reading.

The game also had to work within the Google Arts & Culture ecosystem, support English and Spanish audiences, and meet Google’s technical, security, accessibility and performance requirements.

Psycle needed to create something that felt playful and approachable while remaining respectful to the cultural material and useful as an educational resource.

Character art from Descent of the Serpent game for Google Arts and Culture

Our Approach

Combining storytelling, museum expertise and game design to make learning feel exploratory.

Psycle approached the project as both a game and a learning experience.

Working with Google Arts & Culture, academics and curators from the Museo Nacional de Antropología, we developed a structure that could turn museum objects, myths and historical information into an interactive journey.

The game was built around a clear narrative. Tezcatlipoca, the trickster god, has stolen the 20 icons from the inner circle of the Aztec Sun Stone. Players must travel through Mesoamerica, collect the missing objects and return them to Chichen Itza before the solar equinox.

This gave the educational content a purpose inside the game. Players learned about objects, places, mythology, food, calendars, music, writing and belief systems because that knowledge helped them progress.

We designed the experience around exploration, discovery and challenge, using character selection, NPC dialogue, journal entries, artefact collection, guardian tests and final puzzles to keep players engaged.

Storyboard for the introductory video to Descent of the Serpent game, showing the theft of the icons from the sun stone

The Solution

A browser-based Google Arts & Culture experiment built around artefact discovery, puzzles and bilingual educational content.

Psycle wrote, designed and developed Descent of the Serpent as a browser-based Google Arts & Culture experiment.

The game invites players to explore four Mesoamerican environments, collect artefacts, avoid hazards and complete challenges at the end of each area.

When players discover an object, the game pauses and opens an information screen showing the artefact, contextual learning content and a link back to Google Arts & Culture. This connects the game experience directly to the wider museum collection.

NPCs provide clues, facts and background information throughout the maze, while the player’s journal stores important details needed for later challenges.

The gameplay includes guardian quizzes, matching games, sliding puzzles, inventory tracking, timed challenges and a final Sun Stone sequence. Successful completion triggers the Descent of the Serpent animation, inspired by the shadow that appears on the steps of El Castillo at Chichen Itza during the equinox.

Technically, the game was built using Angular, HTML Canvas, Flask, Google App Engine and Cloud Storage. It was designed to run as an embedded Google Arts & Culture experiment, with integration into the AxL framework for navigation, sharing, analytics, save states and high scores.

Technology included

Grid of selected screens from the Descent of the Serpent game

The game was localised into English and Spanish, with content and configuration held separately to make updates easier.

Selection of artwork from Descent of the Serpent game, showing enemies and terrain

The Outcome

An accessible educational game that brought museum collections to wider audiences and supported classroom learning.

Descent of the Serpent turned a museum collection into an interactive educational experience.

The project helped Google Arts & Culture bring Mesoamerican history, mythology and artefacts to a wider audience through gameplay, storytelling and exploration.

The game was recommended by multiple educational sites and used in schools as part of lesson plans, showing its value beyond launch activity.

The success of Descent of the Serpent also led Google Arts & Culture to ask Psycle to create a follow-up game, Return of the Cat Mummy, promoting Egyptian artefacts from museums around the world.

The result is a strong example of educational creative technology: an accessible, culturally grounded game that helps people learn by exploring, collecting, questioning and playing.

KEY RESULTS

Created an educational game for Google Arts & Culture
Promoted the Museo Nacional de Antropología’s Mesoamerican collection
Wrote, designed and developed the full game experience
Worked with academics and curators to improve accuracy and accessibility
Built four explorable game areas with artefacts, NPCs, hazards and guardian challenges
Connected object discovery to Google Arts & Culture collection content
Delivered English and Spanish localisation
Built using Angular, HTML Canvas, Flask, Google App Engine and Cloud Storage
Integrated with Google Arts & Culture’s AxL framework
Recommended by educational sites and used in schools
Led to the follow-up game Return of the Cat Mummy