Ubisoft's Keys to Learn Event highlighted how games can have a positive impact, Rabbids Coding announced

Ubisoft hosted an event in London on Monday called Keys To Learn. The event's goal was to highlight the "positive impact of games" in education, learning and more.

Various talks and panels were held by representatives from BAFTA, UKIE, Video Games Without Borders, Games for Emotional and Mental Health Lab in Radboud University, UNESCO Education Sector and the Creative Computing Club. The also marked the launch of the BAFTA Young Games Designers initiative for 2020.

New educations tools were also showcased, such as Rabbids Coding, a free game created to teach coding without instruction or supervision.

The event also showcased Discovery Tour: Ancient Greece, which is free to all owners of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey or for €19.99 through Uplay.

Project Oikos, a co-op experience which teaches how rewarding cooperation can be, and Game Creators’ Odyssey which is a online course which takes users through the game development process. Details on each are below.

• Rabbids Coding is a brand new free game created to be a fun and engaging educational experience, giving people the tools to get excited about learning to code without constant supervision or instruction from a teacher. Players are tasked with cleaning up a spaceship that has been overrun by the Rabbids, which can be achieved by either providing simple instructions to a Rabbid wearing a mind-control device, or by dropping sausages in their line of sight. The game doesn't require any previous knowledge of coding at all; instructions are simple and can be dragged from a menu, placed in order, and tested with the play button. Didn't get the results you were expecting? Don't worry, just see where it went wrong, move some things around, and try again! You will be able to get your hands on Rabbids Coding for free starting on 8th October; just head over to Uplay and download it! If you're old enough to read, you're old enough to play Rabbids Coding. It's Ubisoft's hope to see the game being picked up in classrooms and educational environments around the world.

• Project Oikos is a local co-op gaming experience that teaches players how co-operation can be much more rewarding and efficient in times of crisis. In Project Oikos, players take charge of a small ecosystem containing four species. All four species, and the overall health of the pond, are all interdependent. As soon as a play session begins, the ecosystem will start to become unbalanced and players are tasked with working together to restore and maintain the balance of the pond. Project Oikos is an ambitious attempt to design a game with the intent to raise awareness among players regarding the challenges of the 21st century. Without lecturing or guilt tripping, the game encourages players to cooperate to keep the environment healthy and balanced through gameplay. This is achieved using ‘biomimicry’, or imitating nature to affect outcomes. For instance, if one ecological system fails then all begin to fail, and relationships between plants and animals within the environment have a direct effect on each other. We are looking forward to sharing Project Oikos with the world in the near future! Assets can be downloaded from this link. Project Oikos has been developed by the Ubisoft Strategic Innovation Lab, an internal team in Paris that works to anticipate future development paths for the company, going beyond the borders of the entertainment industry to spot tech trends, revolutions in the business world, and social changes.

• Game Creators’ Odyssey was also announced. It is the result of a collaboration between Ubisoft and Concordia University in Montreal. Designed as a video game, Game Creators’ Odyssey is an online course that takes students through the development process of video games. The course is based on Ubisoft’s know-how as one of the leaders of the gaming industry and offers a hands-on approach to game design that allows students to learn from a game developer’s perspective.