Embodied Metaphor and Spatial Poetics in Serious Games: A Practice-Based Study on Reconstructing Science Communication Narratives

Science-communication games often inherit an edu-
tainment split: scientific content is delivered through text, quizzes,
or symbolic panels, while play remains an only loosely related
wrapper. This paper asks how serious games might instead
construct scientific understanding as an embodied and spatial
narrative experience. To explore this possibility, we designed
AFTERMATH : GRAVITY ANOMALY, a 2.5D narrative puzzle pro-
totype that combines two theoretical lenses: Lakoff and Johnson’s
embodied metaphor and Bachelard’s poetics of space. The pro-
totype translates gravity-related concepts into manipulable local
fields, composes the level as a layered industrial ruin, and embeds
science communication in diegetic research archives rather than
external lesson screens. We contribute (i) a design framework
that links scientific concepts to sensorimotor image schemas
and spatial-poetic worldbuilding, (ii) a practice-based account of
how this framework is instantiated in a playable prototype, and
(iii) a mixed-methods evaluation protocol for future empirical
validation. Rather than claiming completed learning effects,
the paper positions the prototype as a research-through-design
probe: a concrete artifact for examining how embodied mechanics
and expressive space can expand the narrative repertoire of
science communication in serious games.