The Underground Railroad: Journey to Freedom, a history game

Muzzy Lane Software developed the game for National Geographic Education. The 2014 International Serious Play Awards named it one of its silver medal winners. It ran as an online game with an iOS app version.

Students play in the first person. The story begins on a tobacco plantation on the eastern shore of Maryland, where the player is enslaved, and moves north along the route to freedom. Along the way they meet historical figures who offer help and inspiration, read primary source documents and choose their path. Those choices lead to one of several possible outcomes, and a map lets students follow their progress. Because several outcomes are possible, two students in one class can finish with different results.

Assessment is built into play. Each decision shapes the outcome, so the game measures and rewards critical thinking without a separate quiz.

A solo run takes about 30 minutes, and a small group or classroom session takes about an hour. A teacher's guide covers Grades 6 to 10 in settings inside and outside the classroom. The guide also works as a resource for families, with background information that a parent or caregiver can use to facilitate.

The game's background material explains the Underground Railroad as a secret network that helped men, women and children escape slavery before the Civil War ended it. It uses the network's own vocabulary: conductors who guided travelers, stations along the route and passengers who made the journey. Some conductors traveled with fugitives all the way north or to Canada, while others covered a short stretch and handed them to the next helper. The leaders of the network, called engineers, supplied food, shelter and sometimes jobs, and hid people from those trying to return them to slavery.

The game's old address on National Geographic's education site now forwards to the general National Geographic Education home page, which does not describe it. The Muzzy Lane address that once carried its setup instructions no longer loads, and the 2014 award winners page on the Serious Play Conference site is gone too.

Muzzy Lane itself is still online. Its home page presents assessment tools for durable skills and a product called SkillBuild, and it does not mention the Underground Railroad game. With no official page offering the game, its status is listed as unconfirmed.