Rice is Life: Developing a Neolithic Agricultural Expansion Game Module as a Tool for Cultural Heritage Education

Patricia Cecille Monica H. Panganiban

Rice is Life is a Neolithic agricultural expansion game where players migrate from Taiwan to the Philippines, picking up skills such as navigation and farming, interacting with hunter‑gatherer communities, forming settlements, and even leaving their own archaeological evidence, such as pottery sherds behind, but only if they have stayed long enough in an area. In this immersive game, players can explore concepts of migration, population expansion, and resource management. The devised module is adaptable to the available resources of interested educators, ranging from an offline game where locations function as stations requiring players to physically migrate from island to island to a hybrid version with integrated in‑game QR codes that launch new interactive challenges and expanded multimedia educational content. This paper explores the game as an accessible educational tool to promote public interest and support knowledge retention in archaeology and cultural heritage by employing post‑activity feedback from participants on their learning experiences. While the application of multimodal games in science communication is not novel, the aim of this research is to develop localised narratives within immersive gameplay to promote the prehistoric archaeology of the Philippines and Southeast Asia.