Image you are in a street full of weird houses. All kinds of worm-alien like figures roam the streets and in the street various houses and shops can be found. You are stuck in a dream world, stuck in a Lucid dream. And the only way to find your way back to reality is to wake up. You need to find a way to wake up. The dream world seems perfect and pretty besides some shady figures that are slithering around with suitcases full of money and break in equipment. They are ‘up to no good’… And as the name of the game already states, are you?

The tower is not part of the street but can be reached through the side roads in the main street. When you walk to the tower as you are curious because it is a tower and it has a weird glow around it, you notice it is locked. When you walk around more in the main street and talk to people you find out information that is related to ID and study association Lucid without this being obvious. This information is disguised as talk that fits the specific creatures personality. The player can ask three different questions to the creatures. “What do you do?” And the creature will answer with a theme he is working on or a previous ID project. “What are you up to?” And the creature will answer with activities that the study association organizes such as a drink or a workshop.

The player can also choose to say ‘I’m up to no good’ when this happens the creatures react in different ways but most act surprised or non-interested. When the phrase ‘I’m up to no good’ is said to a shady figure, he will respond with hints on how to break into the tower. If you ask further he will tell you about the items you need to collect. These items are needed to build a device that can help you break in. If you ask how to build the sensor that connects to the dream world to convey your real life actions to results in the dream world he will show you an Arduino circuit that you can build.

In total there are three shady figures that all have their own approach to breaking in, just like students at ID have their own approach to the design process and let their vision guide them. The shady figures are experts on the topic of breaking and entering. The ways of breaking in that are possible are: pushing through the glass by making your own pressure sensor, burning through the glass by heating a circuit with a thermistor and lastly lasering through the glass by directing a real bright light to an LDR while a second LDR is blocked to dim the street lights around the tower.

The next step is to explore the world and find the collectable items. The items are hidden in shops and houses. For each case the stairs need to be collected, to climb the tower and reach the glass. When you complete either one of the three devices and create the right input signal for the Arduino, the Arduino sends a signal to the game. In the electronics store some components can be found such as the resistors. In the shop an information pamphlet is located in which information about reading resistors is shown. Slowly the player learns how to make his circuit complete and what resistor to use. The circuit can be created by trial and error.

When the character is standing on the stairs to the tower and the signal send by the Arduino comes in, the glass of the tower breaks and you are able to walk up the stairs (animation video 2). Once up the stairs you conclude that there is another hurdle: another locked door. To open this door you engage, together with another prospective student, in a sketch battle with a current ID student. This sketch battle cannot be lost and after all the effort to break in you succeed. As a reward you see a reflection video that illustrates how similar the game and ID are in real life. It challenges you to dare to work towards achieving your dreams.

In the game you have talked to creatures (people), shady figures (experts) and made choices based on too little information (setbacks during a design process). You used creativity (sketch battle) and stayed close to reality and technical achievability (Arduino circuit). In the video you even reflected. You went through an iterative process as you hit a hurdle and learned about ID in the process. You have made autonomous decisions based on your own approach (talk to many people?; which break in method to go for). All in all you went through a process where you used skills that are very similar to the skills used at ID. Also the process is very similar and only misses some depth by leaving out some competences. Finally you are dared: Can you find the balance between dream and reality? In other words, can you combine creativity and technology as is done at ID?