Astera, an Educational Game About the Evolution of Galaxies

The Universe at its largest scales remains still almost a mystery for most of the people not working in this field. With Astera, we present an educational video game that can teach about the cosmos whilst providing a thrilling and fun gaming experience. Astera allows the user to fly through the Universe up to the most distant galaxies, and " build" the Universe by growing and merging galaxies according to the most recent findings in astrophysics. As our results show, games like Astera can have a positive impact on players attitude towards galaxy evolution and science in general, and the player's willingness to follow up on related activities.