Created by a physics teacher, SPACE TOW TRUCK is an adventure game filled with REAL physics puzzles that Isaac Newton would have loved!

In SPACE TOW TRUCK, you play as an astronaut that has to, after a painful car crash landing on the Moon, use the laws of mechanics and the innovative patented technologies of SPACE TOW TRUCK to get out of trouble. Besides, who is behind the awkward and mysterious SPACE TOW TRUCK customer service? And why is this “person” so motivated to help you?

In story mode, the narrative of the game, which approaches a romantic comedy and addresses the Fermi paradox (are we alone in the Universe?), will surprise you! With this recreational-educational game targeted for teenagers and adults, you’ll solve puzzles and master physics while discovering the Moon!

With this game created by a physics teacher, physics and puzzles are intimately linked! Each world of the game covers a different physics concept like position, displacement, velocity, acceleration, etc. In story mode, the game starts smoothly with the position and displacement concepts. For a bigger challenge when starting out, use the puzzle mode or the unlocked levels mode to be able to do the 5th world directly on acceleration or the 7th world on black holes and circular motion. You will challenge your mechanics skills while using :

• a Spacetime Vortex to repair your car
• a Teleport Beam to change your position
• Dual Portals to make displacements
• an Antimatter Impulse to change your velocity
• an Electric Impulse to apply a delta-velocity to your car
• an Advanced Laser Beam to control your acceleration
• a Gravitational Wave Beam to control gravity
• a Patented Black Hole Technology to apply circular motions to your car

About the lore of the game, completing each level will reveal the history of science in the level selection scene. As you progress, you will also know more about the Moon, its craters, its seas, and the space landers that dot its surface. Also, the 7th world of the game is dedicated to women in science because it was important for me to talk about the 32 women that are immortalized on the surface of the Moon (out of a total of 1600 craters named after scientists, only 32 are women!). Therefore, playing SPACE TOW TRUCK gives a nice opportunity to reflect on certain inequalities that have led to the under-representation of women in the history of science.

Finally, it’s important to say that few games today use REAL physics to make puzzles. In addition, few games provide an in-depth look at high school and pre-university physics. Yet, these physics puzzles can be a lot of fun, in addition to being an extremely effective way to understand abstract concepts like acceleration. In this sense, SPACE TOW TRUCK fills a void that could benefit anyone interested in science and space, but also teachers and students in high school and pre-university. I created this recreational-educational game because I believe we lack games to feel, understand and democratize high school and pre-university physics. This is why the game demo, which covers the concepts of position and displacement, is offered free of charge to anyone interested in physics (approximately 45 minutes of gameplay).

• Use eight space and patented technologies
• Use an innovative self-service system developped by SPACE TOW TRUCK
• Enjoy a replay system with slow motion effect
• Get help from a mysterious “person” working at SPACE TOW TRUCK and find out why it is so motivated to help you
• Hear Soft Music
• Discover the Moon, with its seas, its craters and the landers that dot its surface
• Learn about the history of science and its evolution, with the last world dedicated to women in science
• Feel, understand and learn the laws of mechanics
• Game created by a physics teacher who worked part time for three years on this game

My name is Eric Laflamme. I am a physics teacher at the Édouard-Montpetit college, located near Montreal, a gamedev and an author. Most of all, I am a very curious person and a fan of science, video games, interactive media, education, computer science, design, art, music, marketing, cinema and much more.

I hold a master’s degree in biophysics from the University of Montreal, a technical college diploma in electronic design and a technical college diploma in jazz guitar. Furthermore, i now have a college study certificate in level design at the ADN Campus (the former Ubisoft campus in Montreal) since 2017 and I have studied independent video game at UQAT in 2021.

In 2011, I founded and designed the modappi educational platform, winner of three awards in Quebec. I am the designer and programmer of about fifty self-correcting random exercises used in online modappi courses. In addition, I am the main author of the book “Measurements and uncertainties in the laboratory – an introduction to experimental sciences”, published by Fides Education in 2018, and the co-author of the digital book “Mastering the vectors by exploring the soil of Mars” in 2016.

The idea of ​​making a video game to feel and understand the laws of physics has been in my head since the beginning of my teaching career. The interactivity and immediate feedback offered by video games make it an ideal tool for learning independently, especially if the game level design is well done. I also wanted to create a game that made the player dream, much like physics and astronomy made me dream when I was a child.

It was therefore since the end of my studies in video game design in 2017 that I began to work more seriously on the concept of a physics-based puzzle game. My long-term goal is to continue developing video games with an educational purpose.

• Finalist at the EDTECH AWARDS 2022 in the “Game For Learning” category
• Finalist at the MEGAMIGS 2021 in the “Best Game Design” category
• Finalist at the PRIX NUMIX 2021 in the “Indie game” category
• Finalist at the MEGAMIGS 2020 in the “Game with social impact” category

• First Official Review of Space Tow Truck : 80/100 (Dark Zero)
• Radio-Canada : The Game That Will Make You Love Physics One Puzzle At A Time (in french only)
• Trailer video with Maglet, a Twitch streamer and a physics teacher
• Pesesurstart.com : Space Tow Truck: the Quebec puzzle game that wants you to love physics (in french only)
• DiceAndDemos First Impressions on YouTube
• Profweb.ca : Space Tow Truck, a game to learn physics differently (in french only)

Your passion for video games, your curiosity and your sense of humor are a great source of inspiration for me. I love you.

Concept, science stuff, game and level design
eric laflamme

programming
eric laflamme
dominic gendron

narrative
sweet baby inc.

Narrative Designer
David Bedard

Writer
Cassiel Moroney

Additional Writing
Kim Belair
Ariadne Macgillivray

Additions and modifications to the original text
Eric Laflamme

Design Consultant
Wako Factory

Visual Consultant& 3D modeling
Marianne Kake

Sound design Consultant
Felipe Diaz

Music
Provided by stevericemusic / pond5

Animations
Mixamo adobe

Photos
NASA
Wikipedia

Wikipedia

special thanks to
ariane dumont, maxence laflamme, alexandre beausoleil, ariane grisé, annick dumais, mattieu bégin, Tommy Mastromonaco, Léo Banno-Cloutier, Antoine Cantin, Sophie Lamont-Cardinal, François Boucher-Genesse, Serge Brouillette, Guillaume Trudel, Arthur Plante, Alexandre Chrétien, Guillaume Perreault Roy, Yohan Hervé, charles-olivier péloquin, christophe st-onge, maxime rheault, maxime coulombe, anne tremblay, olivier levasseur, benoit villeneuve, véronique raymond, Julien Després, metamUrphasis_21, Chris Chancey, Mathieu Perreault.

Assets from unity store
Synty studio 3D models and VFX, atom studio planets pack, lmhpoly low poly modular terrain, ricimi Guipack-clean&minimalist, demigiant dotweenpro, archanor vfx epic toon fx, hovl studio 3d lasers pack, inter illusion i2 localization tool, archanor vfx polygon arsenal FX, chris nolet QuickOutline, mixamo animations, cafofo sounds, soundbits sounds, beebyte obfuscator, film crux singularity sounds, boom library sci-fi ds sounds

Emojis
Twemoji from twitter licensed under the CC-BY 4.0