Immune Attack

Immune Attack is an educational video game developed by the Federation of American Scientists and Escape Hatch Entertainment. Brown University, working with the University of Southern California, handled the early stages of development with funding from the National Science Foundation. The game aims to teach immunology to high school students, and later versions are meant for college-aged learners as well.

The story follows a teenage genius in the near future who has a rare immunodeficiency where her immune system exists but does not work—its cells seem to have forgotten their roles. She teams up with scientists to build a nanobot that can teach immune cells how to fight bacterial and viral infections. Players pilot this nanobot, called the Explorer, remotely. Guided by advisors, they must learn about the body’s cells and environments to figure out how to retrain the immune system, using visual and audio clues provided in the game.

Each level presents a different infection and a new cell type to train. Cells trained in earlier levels can still be used, giving players a variety of agents to complete their missions. Immune Attack was tested in classrooms from 5th to 12th grade across the United States between 2009 and 2013. A research paper on the game was published in 2014 by Dr. Melanie Stegman, then director of the Learning Technologies Program at the Federation of American Scientists. That same year, FAS asked Stegman to spin off the program so the organization could focus on nuclear nonproliferation and secrecy. She founded Molecular Jig Games, which develops commercial-quality video games that teach molecular cell biology. Stegman’s research shows that learning games can effectively teach the terms and abstract concepts of molecular cell biology.