Forest Express – A Unique Board Game for Learning Social Skills and Emotional Regulation
‘Forest Express’ is a digital board game specifically designed to support students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The game ingeniously upgrades the game play of the well-known board game ‘Snakes and Ladders’, incorporating interactive question-and-answer elements for social communication and emotional regulation, enabling students to enhance their emotional regulation and social communication skills through a novel board game experience.
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Checked into Conversation — Illuminating Social Bonds
(1) Game features:
- Engaging Scenario Interactions: The program supports 2 to 6 players simultaneously. Students transform into little animals in the forest, competing to reach the finish line first by rolling dice, answering questions, completing tasks, and utilizing props, etc. The game features the mechanism of ‘Zebra Crossing Shortcuts’ and ‘Roadblock Traps’, equivalent to ‘ladders’ and ‘snakes’ in ‘Snakes and Ladders’ and adds random incident cards such as ‘Green Light Day’ and ‘Major Traffic Jam’, as well as interesting items like ‘Speed Cake’ and ‘Conductor’s Whistle’, greatly enhancing classroom engagement.
- Flexible Thematic Question Banks: The game pre-sets two major themes: ‘Emotional Regulation’ and ‘Social Communication’, each with question banks* for primary and secondary school levels, facilitating school support personnel or instructors to select directly according to students’ needs. Meanwhile, it supports custom questions which can flexibly accommodate various teaching objectives.
* The question bank can be downloaded here. Tutors can review it before group session or update it as needed, then import it into the "Custom Topics" section.
- Individualized support: School support personnel or instructors can set personalized goals for individual students (e.g., talking in a friendly manner, sitting properly, participating actively, etc.). The system will automatically activate task checks during gameplay, making support more targeted. The built-in editor and support for importing spreadsheets enable support personnel to easily enrich question banks and teaching materials, conveniently tailoring exclusive adventure missions for students.
(2) Training focus:
- Emotional Regulation: Students are guided to identify and express personal emotions and practise appropriate emotional regulation strategies when facing different game scenarios.
- Social Communication: Through responding to various social scenarios, students learn to understand others’ perspectives, make appropriate responses, and practise effective communication skills.
- Coping and Problem-Solving: When facing unexpected events or challenges, students attempt multi-faceted thinking and master various coping strategies to solve problems.
Download the Game App
‘Forest Express’ supports various device configurations, offering convenient downloads and simple operation. The game app provides full-screen and windowed display modes, facilitating integration with electronic whiteboard teaching.
- Download the game app on desktop or laptop computers (compatible with Windows and Mac OS) App Download
- Use tablets to access the App Store for download (compatible with Android on Google Play Store, iOS on App Store and HUAWEI AppGallery)
- A user manual, question bank templates, random incident cards and props card lists are also available for assisting support personnel’s preparation Manual Download Question bank Download
Download ‘Forest Express’ now to embark on a railway adventure filled with joy and learning!
For inquiries, please email epsntw@edb.gov.hk .