Escape! From Detention: Mindgrub and Howard County Library students collaborate on new mobile game

Mindgrub creative lead Alex Hachey at the Baltimore Mobile Meetup.
Mindgrub Technologies, the Catonsville-based innovation agency that started a new gaming division this year, has released its latest game.
Escape from Detention is a collaboration with students participating with the Howard County Library’s HiTech, the library’s new STEM digital media lab, who helped with the game’s design and development. Players maneuver detention-serving digital students around time-based obstacles (desks and other students) inside of classrooms.
Download Escape! From Detention for Android or iOS.

The game itself was produced in Corona, said Alex Hachey, Mindgrub’s creative lead, at the Baltimore Mobile Meetup in December. Producing the game in Corona makes it cross-platform, so it’ll work on iOS, Android, the Kindle Fire and the Barnes & Noble Nook. Hachey also said the game development was paid for, as it’s a “client services game.”
Over a six-week period, Mindgrub employees served as instructors teaching students at the HiTech lab principles on game design, theory and logic, as well as teaching classes on producing sound effects, characters and game layout. It was the students who came up with concept for Escape! From Detention.
The lab, which opened in January 2012 and was made possible by a STEM grant the MacArthur Foundation awarded the library in fall 2011, said Christie Lassen, the director of public relations for the Howard County Library System.
“More than 1,200 students between the ages of 11 and 18 [all of whom are students, public, private, or home-schooled, living in Howard County] have participated in HiTech classes since its inception … creating music, 3D images, videos [and] e-books,” according to a press release.
All of Mindgrub’s mobile games are highlighted on its Mindgrub Games website.