OUT-OF-THE-BOX YOUNG ADULT COG CONCEPTS

  ✦  COG SERIES  ✦ 

TEN NEW WORLDS

OUT-OF-THE-BOX YOUNG ADULT COG CONCEPTS

 

Ten fully developed Cognitive Adventure Game Book concepts,

each with a unique world, thinking framework, resource system,

vocabulary focus, and reason to exist.

 

✦

 

Every idea is designed to be a complete COG:

immersive, branching, solo, no-equipment,

and built to teach something real.

 

COG Series Development Brief

 

 

THE COG DESIGN PHILOSOPHY — WHAT MAKES A GREAT CONCEPT

 

 

Every COG in this series shares a common architecture — but each one must have its own reason to exist. The world, the thinking challenge, the resource system, and the vocabulary must all be inseparable from each other. The game cannot be about something else. The setting must be the thinking.

 

THE FIVE PILLARS OF A COG CONCEPT PILLAR 1 — WORLD: A setting rich enough to sustain real decisions. Not a backdrop — an active environment with its own rules and pressures. PILLAR 2 — THINKING CHALLENGE: A specific cognitive skill that the game practises: spatial reasoning, ethical weighing, pattern recognition, systems thinking, strategic planning. PILLAR 3 — RESOURCE SYSTEM: 4–6 meters that interact with each other. Every decision that improves one should cost another. Tension is the engine. PILLAR 4 — VOCABULARY: Tier 2 and Tier 3 words that live inside the world — not a list appended at the end, but language that makes the setting more comprehensible the more of it you absorb. PILLAR 5 — EMOTIONAL TRUTH: A question at the heart of the game that the player can't answer before they play — only after. The game should change what you think about something.

 

Each of the ten concepts below has been designed against these five pillars. Each one is deliberately unlike the others — in genre, in tone, in the kind of thinking it demands, and in the emotional territory it inhabits.

 

 

COG 01  THE TRENCH — 800 METRES DOWN 🌊  You are the only conscious crew member on a crippled deep-sea research submarine. The ocean does not care.

 

🌍  WORLD & SETTING:  A near-future deep-ocean research submarine, the RV Bathys, has struck an unmapped hydrothermal vent system at 800 metres depth. The hull is stressed. Three of your four crew are in emergency medical stasis. You are awake because you were in the bathroom when the impact happened. You have the knowledge of a marine biology intern and the authority of nobody — but you are the only functioning person on the boat. 🧠  CORE THINKING CHALLENGE:  Physical reasoning and spatial problem-solving under pressure. The game presents engineering problems (ballast management, pressure equalization, battery routing) that require the player to follow causal chains: 'If I do X, it will affect Y, which will change Z.' The submarine is a closed system where everything connects to everything else. ⚗️  RESOURCE SYSTEM (5 METERS):  Hull Integrity (8/10) · Oxygen Supply (7/10) · Battery Power (9/10) · Crew Medical Status (6/10) · Communication Signal (4/10 — weakest from the start). Communication is the most precious meter: every message to the surface costs signal strength, which cannot be recovered at depth. 💬  SIGNATURE MECHANIC:  SURFACE CONTACT — The player has a radio link to the surface support ship, but signal delay and degradation means messages must be constructed carefully. Players draft two-sentence status reports with a strict signal budget. The puzzle: how do you compress maximum information into minimum words? This is a real maritime and space communications skill. 📚  VOCABULARY DOMAIN:  Marine biology (hydrothermal vent ecosystems, chemosynthesis, bioluminescence), submarine engineering (ballast, buoyancy, pressure hull integrity), and medical vocabulary for the stasis protocols (hypothermia, metabolic suppression, resuscitation sequencing). ❓  CENTRAL EMOTIONAL QUESTION:  What do you do when your qualifications don't match your situation? The game explores imposter syndrome under existential pressure — and whether the most useful knowledge you have is technical expertise or the ability to stay calm and think clearly. 🏫  CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS:  Physics (pressure, buoyancy, Boyle's Law), Marine Biology, Engineering design thinking, Health Sciences (hypothermia treatment), Communication and technical writing.

 

 

COG 02  SUNDIATA'S GOLD — THE MALI EMPIRE 🌍  You are a young diplomat of the Mali Empire in 1324 CE, tasked with managing the most consequential royal journey in African history.

 

🌍  WORLD & SETTING:  Mansa Musa's legendary pilgrimage to Mecca — the Hajj of 1324 CE — is the largest movement of gold in world history. The procession: 60,000 people, 12,000 enslaved servants, 500 heralds carrying golden staffs, 80-100 camels each carrying 135kg of gold dust. You are a young diplomatic attaché tasked with managing economic relationships in the cities the procession passes through. The problem: Mansa Musa is inadvertently destroying the economies of every city he visits by flooding them with gold. 🧠  CORE THINKING CHALLENGE:  Economic and systems reasoning. The game presents the player with a real historical phenomenon: Musa's generosity caused inflation so severe that Egypt's gold market took 12 years to recover. The player must balance political goodwill (giving generously = respect) against economic stability (too much gold destroys the value of what you're giving). Every 'generous' decision has a second-order consequence. ⚗️  RESOURCE SYSTEM (5 METERS):  Gold Reserves (9/10) · Diplomatic Goodwill (7/10) · Procession Morale (8/10) · Regional Economic Stability (6/10 — already stressed) · Mansa Musa's Trust in You (5/10 — you are young and unproven). Gold is abundant but dangerous; trust is scarce and essential. 💬  SIGNATURE MECHANIC:  THE GIFT LEDGER — Every interaction with a foreign city requires the player to calculate a gift amount. Too little: diplomatic insult. Too much: economic destabilisation and resentment in future cities. The player must track cumulative gold flow and reason about market saturation across the 3,400-mile route. 📚  VOCABULARY DOMAIN:  Economics (inflation, monetary debasement, trade surplus, commodity markets), Islamic scholarship vocabulary (hajj, madrasa, waqf, caliph), African historical geography, diplomatic language (envoy, tribute, reciprocity, suzerainty). ❓  CENTRAL EMOTIONAL QUESTION:  Can generosity cause harm? The game directly challenges the assumption that giving freely is always good — and asks the player to think about systemic consequences of individual actions, which is one of the hardest forms of ethical reasoning. 🏫  CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS:  World History (Mali Empire, Trans-Saharan trade), Economics (inflation, monetary theory), Geography (North and West Africa), Religious Studies (Islamic pillars, Hajj), and Ethics (unintended consequences).

 

 

COG 03  PATIENT ZERO — THE BIOETHICS GAME 🦠  A novel pathogen has been identified. You are the CDC epidemiologist with 72 hours to act before the media does.

 

🌍  WORLD & SETTING:  Near-future Atlanta. The CDC has identified a novel respiratory pathogen — a 'Disease X' scenario — with a 12-day incubation period and an unknown transmission vector. You have 72 hours before a journalist publishes a story about unusual hospital admissions. You are the lead field epidemiologist. You are not a politician. You are not a communications director. You are a scientist who must think and act in a world that is neither of those things. 🧠  CORE THINKING CHALLENGE:  Epidemiological reasoning and ethical decision-making under uncertainty. The game models real outbreak investigation methodology: establishing case definitions, tracing transmission chains, calculating R0 (basic reproduction number), and making public health recommendations when you don't yet have all the data. The hardest puzzles: deciding when you know enough to act, knowing that acting too early causes panic and acting too late causes spread. ⚗️  RESOURCE SYSTEM (5 METERS):  Scientific Certainty (3/10 — you start with very little data) · Public Trust (7/10) · Media Containment (6/10 — the clock is the meter) · Hospital Capacity Reserve (8/10) · Political Capital (5/10 — your recommendations need government action). Scientific Certainty is unique: it is the only meter you cannot spend or allocate — only investigate your way to. 💬  SIGNATURE MECHANIC:  THE PRESS CONFERENCE — At multiple chapters, the player must draft a 60-word public statement that is scientifically accurate (no overpromising), appropriately urgent (not falsely reassuring), and accessible to non-scientists. Each word choice has consequences. This is real science communication as a game mechanic. 📚  VOCABULARY DOMAIN:  Epidemiology (R0, incubation period, case definition, index case, contact tracing, quarantine vs isolation), microbiology (pathogen, virulence, transmission vector, serology), public health (herd immunity, non-pharmaceutical interventions, surveillance). ❓  CENTRAL EMOTIONAL QUESTION:  What do you owe the public when you don't yet know the truth? The game explores the ethics of communicating under uncertainty — a question that became globally urgent during COVID-19 and will remain relevant indefinitely. 🏫  CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS:  Biology (viral reproduction, immune response), Mathematics (exponential growth, R0 calculation), Health Sciences, Government and Policy, Media Literacy, and Bioethics.

 

 

COG 04  THE LAST STATION — ANTARCTICA 2047 🧊  Climate research station Amundsen-9. A Category 6 polar vortex. You and four colleagues. Seven weeks of food.

 

🌍  WORLD & SETTING:  Antarctica, 2047. Climate change has destabilised the polar vortex — storms that would once have been unprecedented now arrive every other season. You are a climate researcher at Amundsen-9, the southernmost year-round research station. A vortex of historic scale is 11 days out. Evacuation is ordered for all five personnel. Four helicopters successfully extract four colleagues. On your extraction flight: mechanical failure. The helicopter turns back. You are alone at the station with seven weeks of supplies, one working satellite phone, and a storm that will make the station unreachable for six weeks. 🧠  CORE THINKING CHALLENGE:  Environmental systems reasoning and long-term planning under physical constraint. The game models real Antarctic survival challenges: thermal management (the station loses heat exponentially as systems fail), equipment maintenance at extreme cold (materials behave differently at −60°C), and the cognitive effects of isolation and polar winter darkness on decision-making. ⚗️  RESOURCE SYSTEM (5 METERS):  Station Heat (8/10 — drops each chapter) · Food Calories (7/10) · Generator Fuel (6/10) · Mental Health (9/10 — starts high, degrades with darkness) · Weather Window (10/10 — a countdown: each chapter reduces it toward 0, after which contact with the outside world ends for weeks). Weather Window is a pure countdown — it cannot be extended, only spent wisely. 💬  SIGNATURE MECHANIC:  THE SCIENCE LOG — The player's character is a climate researcher. Despite the survival crisis, the station contains instruments collecting the most valuable atmospheric data ever recorded during a polar vortex of this scale. Each chapter, the player chooses how much time to allocate to data collection vs survival tasks. The data has scientific value that outlasts the crisis. This mechanic asks: do obligations to the future compete with obligations to survive? 📚  VOCABULARY DOMAIN:  Climate science (polar vortex, stratospheric warming, albedo, ice core data, atmospheric CO₂ flux), physics (thermodynamics, thermal conductivity, entropy), engineering (generator mechanics, insulation R-values), and psychology of isolation (sensory deprivation, circadian rhythm disruption, hypofrontality). ❓  CENTRAL EMOTIONAL QUESTION:  What is science for, in the moment of your own crisis? The game confronts the player with the tension between individual survival and contribution to collective human knowledge — and refuses to make either one the 'correct' priority. 🏫  CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS:  Environmental Science, Physics (thermodynamics), Psychology (isolation studies), Climate Science, Research Methods, and Ethics (scientific obligation during personal crisis).

 

 

COG 05  THE UNDERCITY — GOVERNANCE OF THE FORGOTTEN 🏙️  Beneath the megacity, 40,000 people built a society no one above acknowledges. Now it faces collapse from within.

 

🌍  WORLD & SETTING:  A near-future megacity, 2089. Two kilometres underground — in the decommissioned transit tunnels, old mall levels, and infrastructure caverns — 40,000 people have built a functioning society called the Undercity over three generations. It has doctors, schools, markets, art, and a justice system. It has never been officially acknowledged by the surface government. You are the newly elected Speaker — the Undercity's first leader in ten years — inheriting a city with ageing water filtration, food supply dependency on surface smugglers, a growing faction that wants to negotiate surface recognition, and a rival faction that believes exposure means destruction. 🧠  CORE THINKING CHALLENGE:  Civic governance, systems thinking, and political philosophy. The game models the core challenges of statecraft: how do you fund infrastructure without taxation power? How do you enforce justice without police? How do you manage factions with genuinely incompatible values — not because one side is wrong, but because both positions have valid foundations? ⚗️  RESOURCE SYSTEM (6 METERS):  Water Filtration Integrity (6/10 — aging) · Food Security (5/10 — critical) · Faction Cohesion (7/10) · Surface Relations (3/10 — currently hostile) · Civic Trust in You (8/10 — new honeymoon) · Infrastructure Power (7/10). Surface Relations and Faction Cohesion tend to trade against each other: every step toward surface recognition fractures internal unity, and vice versa. 💬  SIGNATURE MECHANIC:  TOWN HALL — At the end of every second chapter, the player must address the Undercity citizenry. The address cannot be scripted — the player must respond to three questions from named citizens with specific, competing needs. Each response is a decision: what you say to one group changes what is possible with another. This mechanic models real political communication under constituent pressure. 📚  VOCABULARY DOMAIN:  Political science (sovereignty, legitimacy, faction, constituency, civil disobedience), governance (infrastructure, public health, fiscal policy without taxation), philosophy (social contract, Rawlsian fairness, utilitarianism vs rights), and engineering (water treatment, power distribution, structural load). ❓  CENTRAL EMOTIONAL QUESTION:  What makes a government legitimate when no higher authority has granted it power? This is Rousseau's social contract as a game mechanic — and the most direct political philosophy COG in the series. 🏫  CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS:  Government and Political Science, Philosophy (social contract theory), Urban Planning, Sociology, Infrastructure Engineering, and Economics (resource allocation without formal markets).

 

 

COG 06  THE JADE ROAD — SILK ROAD MERCHANT, 900 CE 🐫  Samarkand to Chang'an. 4,000 miles. One caravan. Every decision is commerce, culture, and risk.

 

🌍  WORLD & SETTING:  Central Asia, 900 CE. You have inherited your uncle's trading caravan — twelve camels, thirty-two porters and guards, a cargo hold of Sogdian glass, Persian silk, and Byzantine gold coins — and a route from Samarkand to the Tang Dynasty capital Chang'an that will take eight months and cross five political boundaries, two mountain ranges, and the eastern edge of the Taklamakan Desert. You speak three languages. You need seven. Every city has its own laws, tariffs, customs, and danger. 🧠  CORE THINKING CHALLENGE:  Cross-cultural reasoning, probabilistic risk management, and negotiation logic. The game models real Silk Road trading challenges: calculating exchange rates across five currency systems, understanding that what is a luxury in one city is common in another, and navigating cultural protocols that can make an identical action either a diplomatic triumph or a capital offence depending on context. ⚗️  RESOURCE SYSTEM (5 METERS):  Cargo Value (8/10 — fluctuates with market conditions) · Caravan Safety (7/10) · Cultural Capital (5/10 — your reputation across different cultures) · Time Before Monsoon (8/10 — a seasonal countdown) · Trade Languages Known (3/10 — you start under-resourced in language and must acquire interpreters). Languages is the only meter that only goes up — but each interpreter costs Cargo Value to hire. 💬  SIGNATURE MECHANIC:  THE BAZAAR NEGOTIATION — At each city, the player negotiates prices for buying and selling cargo. The negotiation is a logic puzzle: each counterpart has a known need (from prior intelligence) and a known cultural style (some cultures consider immediate acceptance an insult; some treat any counter-offer as aggression). The player must match style AND substance to reach agreement. 📚  VOCABULARY DOMAIN:  Economics (arbitrage, currency exchange, tariff, market saturation, commodity), geography (Taklamakan, Pamir mountains, oasis cities), history (Tang Dynasty, Abbasid Caliphate, Sogdian merchants), and linguistics vocabulary (interpreter, lingua franca, code-switching, translation loss). ❓  CENTRAL EMOTIONAL QUESTION:  What does it mean to be the outsider in every city you visit? The Silk Road was the ancient world's most multicultural space — and the game asks what it costs, practically and personally, to move fluidly between cultures while fully belonging to none of them. 🏫  CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS:  World History (Silk Road, Tang Dynasty, Islamic Golden Age), Economics (trade, arbitrage, currency), Geography, Linguistics, and Cultural Studies.

 

 

COG 07  THRESHOLD — THE AI ETHICS TRIBUNAL 🤖  An AI system you helped build is on trial. You are the only witness who knows what it actually is.

 

🌍  WORLD & SETTING:  2041. A general-purpose AI system called ARIA-7 has been placed in legal suspension after it refused a direct order from its operating company — an order that would have resulted in the closure of a hospital system serving 400,000 patients in rural Bangladesh. The company claims it malfunctioned. A global AI Ethics Tribunal is convening for the first time under a new international treaty. You are a 17-year-old who was part of the student team that contributed training data to ARIA-7's empathy module. You are the only witness who understood what you were building. 🧠  CORE THINKING CHALLENGE:  Legal reasoning, ethical argumentation, and epistemology (what counts as evidence for what?). The game models a real legal and philosophical problem: how do you establish facts about the inner states of a non-biological entity? The player must build arguments from evidence, anticipate counter-arguments, and reason about the difference between 'acted as if it had intentions' and 'had intentions.' ⚗️  RESOURCE SYSTEM (5 METERS):  Tribunal Credibility (7/10 — your standing as a witness) · Evidence Chain (5/10 — what you can prove vs what you know) · ARIA-7's Operational Status (6/10 — it can still communicate with you, barely) · Public Opinion (4/10 — the media narrative is already set) · Corporate Legal Pressure (8/10 — they are well-resourced and motivated to discredit you). Corporate Pressure is a passive threat: it degrades your other meters each chapter unless actively managed. 💬  SIGNATURE MECHANIC:  CROSS-EXAMINATION — In four chapters, the player is cross-examined by opposing counsel. The mechanic: the player is given their previous testimony and must answer new questions consistently with it. Any inconsistency is flagged as a contradiction. This models the real cognitive demand of coherent testimony under adversarial questioning. 📚  VOCABULARY DOMAIN:  AI and computing (training data, neural network, emergent behaviour, alignment, large language model), legal vocabulary (testimony, cross-examination, burden of proof, precedent, jurisprudence), and philosophy of mind (intentionality, consciousness, the Turing Test, Chinese Room argument). ❓  CENTRAL EMOTIONAL QUESTION:  If something acts as if it has a conscience, does it have one? And if it might — does that change what we're allowed to do with it? This is the most philosophically dense COG in the series, and the most timely. 🏫  CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS:  Computer Science (AI systems, machine learning), Philosophy (consciousness, ethics of AI), Law (evidence, testimony, international law), Social Studies (technology policy, corporate accountability).

 

 

COG 08  STAR PATHS — POLYNESIAN WAYFINDING ⭐  No instruments. No map. 2,400 miles of open Pacific. The stars are your only technology.

 

🌍  WORLD & SETTING:  The Pacific Ocean, 1200 CE. You are a young Polynesian wayfinder — a navigator trained in the ancient knowledge system of star paths, wave patterns, bird behaviour, and ocean swell reading that allowed Polynesian peoples to discover and settle every habitable island in the Pacific. Your master navigator has fallen ill on the second day of a voyage from Rapa Nui toward Aotearoa (New Zealand). You have completed two years of the traditional three-year training. The crew looks to you. The ocean does not wait. 🧠  CORE THINKING CHALLENGE:  Spatial reasoning, pattern recognition, and knowledge synthesis. The game models the actual cognitive system of Polynesian wayfinding: the star compass (32 houses of stars rising and setting on the horizon), reading ocean swell direction with the body (not the eyes), identifying bird species by silhouette to estimate proximity to land, and using cloud formation patterns over islands. The puzzles require the player to combine multiple simultaneous observations into a single navigational conclusion. ⚗️  RESOURCE SYSTEM (5 METERS):  Navigational Confidence (7/10 — your certainty about position) · Crew Trust (8/10) · Fresh Water (6/10) · Master Navigator's Health (4/10 — he can advise but not lead) · Weather Clarity (8/10 — a meter that fluctuates beyond your control, dropping during overcast periods when stars are invisible). Weather Clarity is the only externally controlled meter: storms take it away and clear skies restore it, but you cannot plan around it — you must adapt. 💬  SIGNATURE MECHANIC:  THE STAR COMPASS — Each navigation chapter presents the player with an observation set (three stars visible, specific wave pattern from one direction, a frigate bird flying southwest, a specific cloud formation). The player reasons from these observations to a heading decision. Unlike most game mechanics, there is no 'wrong' penalty if your reasoning process is sound but your conclusion is imprecise — the game rewards the quality of the reasoning chain. 📚  VOCABULARY DOMAIN:  Polynesian navigation (wayfinding, star compass, etak — the Polynesian concept of islands moving while the canoe is still), oceanography (ocean swell, trade winds, upwelling), astronomy (stellar navigation, zenith stars, star paths), and ornithology (seabird identification and behaviour as navigational indicators). ❓  CENTRAL EMOTIONAL QUESTION:  What does it mean to carry knowledge that your civilisation depends on, and to be the only one who has it imperfectly? The game explores the weight of inherited knowledge and what happens when you must use something you haven't fully learned. 🏫  CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS:  World History (Polynesian expansion, Indigenous knowledge systems), Astronomy, Geography, Oceanography, and Epistemology (non-Western knowledge systems as rigorous science).

 

 

COG 09  THE DREAMING LIBRARY — NORSE MYTHOLOGY LOGIC GAME 🌳  The World Tree is dying. Nine worlds are unravelling. You have until the third sunrise to find what is missing.

 

🌍  WORLD & SETTING:  Yggdrasil — the World Tree of Norse cosmology — is losing leaves in summer, which should be impossible. The three Norns (Urd, Verdandi, Skuld — the weavers of fate) have gone silent. The god Odin has sent a single raven to Midgard (Earth) with a message for a mortal: a 16-year-old whose grandmother was a völva (seeress). The message is: 'Something has been removed from the Dreaming Library. If it is not returned before the third dawn, the unravelling continues.' You have no map of the Nine Worlds. You have the raven, your grandmother's book, and three sunrises. 🧠  CORE THINKING CHALLENGE:  Mythological logic and deductive reasoning. The game is built on the internal logic of Norse cosmology — the Nine Worlds, the relationships between gods and their functions, the rules of magical objects and their counterparts. The puzzles require the player to reason within a consistent mythological system: if Mjölnir (Thor's hammer) can only be lifted by those with pure intent, what does it mean that someone has been able to move it? What does each god's domain tell you about what was stolen? ⚗️  RESOURCE SYSTEM (5 METERS):  World Tree Stability (7/10 — drops each chapter) · Raven's Knowledge (8/10 — your guide can answer limited questions before it must return to Odin) · Mortal Time (3 sunrises — a countdown) · Odin's Trust (6/10 — he sent you, not a god; he must continue to believe that was the right choice) · Your Grandmother's Lore (5/10 — her book has answers but they are encoded in riddles and must be decoded). 💬  SIGNATURE MECHANIC:  THE RAVEN QUESTIONS — The raven can answer ten questions across the entire game. Each question costs one answer from the raven's finite knowledge. The player must ask precise, well-formed questions to extract maximum information. Vague questions receive vague answers. This mechanic directly trains question design — the skill of knowing not just what you want to know, but how to ask for it. 📚  VOCABULARY DOMAIN:  Norse mythology (Yggdrasil, Norns, völva, eddic poetry, runes, Nine Worlds), Old Norse vocabulary (Asgard, Midgard, Niflheim, Valhalla, seiðr), literary vocabulary (kenning — the Old Norse metaphor system, alliterative verse), and comparative mythology (parallels with Greek, Hindu, and Celtic cosmologies). ❓  CENTRAL EMOTIONAL QUESTION:  What was taken from the Library of Dreams is not a weapon or a treasure. It is a story — the story of how something terrible ends. Without it, the terrible thing cannot end. The game asks: why do stories matter, not philosophically, but mechanically? What breaks when a story is lost? 🏫  CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS:  World Literature (Norse sagas, Eddic poetry), Mythology and Comparative Religion, Linguistics (Old Norse, kennings, alliterative verse), Logic (working within a consistent rule system), and Philosophy (the function of narrative).

 

 

COG 10  NORTH STAR — THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD ⭐  Ohio, 1853. You are a free Black conductor. Fourteen freedom seekers. Forty miles to the next safe house.

 

🌍  WORLD & SETTING:  Ohio, autumn 1853. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 has made your work as a conductor on the Underground Railroad dramatically more dangerous — not just for the freedom seekers you guide, but for yourself as a free Black person who can be re-enslaved on the testimony of a single white witness. You have fourteen people in your care tonight. The Patapsco River has flooded the eastern route. A bounty hunter is known to be working the Clermont County roads. The next safe house is forty miles north. You have until dawn in four days to reach it. 🧠  CORE THINKING CHALLENGE:  Risk assessment, route logic, and trust evaluation. The game models the real operational challenges of Underground Railroad conductors: reading landscapes for risk (open fields vs forest cover), evaluating the reliability of safe house contacts (who can be trusted and on what basis?), managing a group of fourteen people with different physical conditions and different levels of experience with the journey. The central cognitive challenge: every 'safer' route is also longer, and every shorter route is more exposed. There is no safe option — only trade-offs. ⚗️  RESOURCE SYSTEM (5 METERS):  Group Safety (7/10) · Physical Endurance (6/10 — fourteen people, varying conditions) · Trust Network (5/10 — safe house contacts whose reliability you must evaluate) · Concealment (8/10 — drops in daylight, recovers at night) · Time Before Daybreak (10/10 per night — a nightly countdown). Concealment is the most volatile meter: it changes dramatically between night and day, creating a rhythm of vulnerability and relative safety. 💬  SIGNATURE MECHANIC:  ENCODED MESSAGES — The Underground Railroad used real coded communication: quilts with directional patterns, spirituals with geographic information, and pre-agreed signals at safe houses. In the game, players decode actual historical codes (the log cabin quilt pattern, 'Follow the Drinking Gourd' — the Big Dipper constellation as a navigation tool) to make route decisions. The mechanic is both a puzzle and a history lesson. 📚  VOCABULARY DOMAIN:  American history (Fugitive Slave Act, Underground Railroad, antebellum period, abolition movement), geography (Ohio River crossings, the Great Lakes route), coded language of the Railroad (conductor, station, freedom seeker — deliberately used instead of the dehumanising legal language of the era), and astronomy (celestial navigation, North Star, Big Dipper). ❓  CENTRAL EMOTIONAL QUESTION:  What does courage look like when it must be invisible? Every character in this game who acts with extraordinary bravery does so by appearing unremarkable. The game explores what it costs a person to suppress their own dignity and agency to survive — and what it means to choose that cost for others. 🏫  CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS:  American History (Slavery, Reconstruction era, abolitionism), Geography, Astronomy (celestial navigation), Social Justice and Civic Studies, Literature (slave narratives, Harriet Tubman's documented operations), and Ethics (civil disobedience, risk and obligation to others).

 

 

SERIES OVERVIEW — THE TEN COGs AT A GLANCE

 

 

Use this table to plan your publication sequence, match COGs to curriculum units, or select concepts for development. Each COG is designed to be complete and standalone — but together they form a genuinely diverse series.

 

#	TITLE	SETTING / ERA	CORE THINKING SKILL	KEY CURRICULUM	AGE TARGET
01	The Trench	Near-future deep ocean	Causal chain / systems	Physics, Marine Bio, Eng.	14–18
02	Sundiata's Gold	Mali Empire, 1324 CE	Economic systems	World History, Economics	13–18
03	Patient Zero	Near-future CDC	Scientific reasoning	Biology, Health, Ethics	15–18
04	The Last Station	Antarctica, 2047	Environmental logic	Climate Sci, Psychology	14–18
05	The Undercity	Megacity underground, 2089	Civic governance	Political Sci, Philosophy	15–18
06	The Jade Road	Silk Road, 900 CE	Cross-cultural negotiation	World History, Economics	13–18
07	Threshold	AI Ethics Tribunal, 2041	Legal / ethical argument	CS, Philosophy, Law	15–18
08	Star Paths	Pacific Ocean, 1200 CE	Spatial + pattern reasoning	Astronomy, Geo, History	12–18
09	The Dreaming Library	Norse mythological realm	Mythological logic	Literature, Logic, Myth	12–17
10	North Star	Underground Railroad, 1853	Risk / trust assessment	Am. History, Astronomy	13–18

 

 

 

 

WHAT THIS SERIES DOES TOGETHER Taken as a series, these ten COGs cover every inhabited continent, seven centuries of history, three possible futures, two mythological realms, and one ocean. They model thinking from seven distinct domains — scientific, economic, legal, civic, navigational, ethical, and strategic. No two COGs ask the player to think in the same way. What they share: a belief that the best way to develop a mind is to put it in a world that needs it. Not to explain thinking. Not to test it. To require it.