Skip to main content

Life Preservers: An Evolution Serious Game



Life Preservers is a video game that teaches National Science standards on evolution, adaptation, and the history of life on earth. It is an engaging, fun, pedagogically rich learning experience that can fit within a single class period.

Life Preservers was funded by the National Science Foundation. It was created by the Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab and is copyrighted by Michigan State University, 2005. The project is conducted by Professor Carrie Heeter, Brian Winn and colleagues at Michigan State University.

To give teachers flexibility when they use Life Preservers in their classroom, a long and a short version of the game are available. The short version has only one round, THE AGE OF DINOSAURS. The long version has that same identical round and then continues to THE AGE OF MAMMALS.


In the game, you are a member of LIFE PRESERVERS, an acient alien organization dedicated to protecting the natural ecosystem of planets where intelligent life may evolve. Earth is one of the planets the team you lead is assigned to protect.