Outpost Zarahemla, the first videogame geared toward LDS audiences, takes players on a galactic mission through space and gospel topics.

The game, created by Wahoo studios, is the first LDS video game available on the market. The characters of the game resemble alien-style missionaries whose purpose is to "expand the Mormon colonies in space," according to the games' website.

Rex Hale, president of sales at Cleanware which is the company who is releasing the game, said it is sort of like a tycoon game, or could be compared to the game Monopoly.

The game is set so the player, who is portrayed by a character named Elder Hero, learns from his trainer about how to meet the demand of the visitors who come by ship to their space stations' post.

"Your trainer is teaching you how to maintain these space stations to build up the mission of the church," Hale said. "So you're out here in space and in one area asteroids have come in and they have beat it up so your responsibility is to build it back up; get social things going, build church buildings, build up missionary work.

"In each of those areas you'll see icons and graphics, like if you build a church it looks like a church, if you build a church broadcast system it looks like a satellite dish," he said.

The game is set up for one person to play at a time, and was originally aimed at teenagers.

"We built it because we had LDS bookstores telling us they were looking for LDS video games for teens," Hale said.

But even though it was intended for teens, Hale said he doesn't want to skew the market by implying it is only for them.

"I've got a nine-year-old boy who plays it and loves it, and I've seen a lot of adults playing it and loving it," Hale said. "It's very appropriate for (younger) kids, but they might have a harder time with the questions."

The questions are an important part of the game, because in some scenarios that's how the player moves on.

"In one area it's investigator questions, and in another area it's new member questions," Hale said. "It's just ships that are passing by and asking questions and on a given scenario you have to answer a given number correctly to pass that scenario."

In another scenario of the game, Hale said the players have to "build up the power capabilities of the space station you're on in order to get transferred to your new area."

There are ports in the game where ships stop and one of the important factors is being able to meet the demand for whatever the visitors on the ship want.

"...They [the visitors] may be requesting areas to do genealogy work, so you would build a micro-fiche reader, or you would build a family history center," Hale said. "If it's on the spiritual development level than you might build a ward outing or a youth camp. And each of these are really detailed graphics, they're really pretty."

Romney Doria, a freshman from Provo said the game sounds interesting to him.

"It's different, it might not be as ground breaking as a game like Counter Strike, but it's still interesting and I would still want to try it out," he said. "I'm just curious to find out what it's like."

For a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the game has a lot of commonalities to real life, but according to Hale that was all part of the plan.

"We've tried to make it fun but still have some real life underneath it," he said. "There's tons of humor throughout it, we make fun of tons of things- but it's not sac-religious."

The game even has a commonality for BYU students.

"In one scenario you're supposed to build a church college, and for a while we were going to call it BYU-Zarahemla, but we just called it Church College," Hale said. "But the Church Colleges' slogan is BYU's slogan reversed, basically 'Enter to serve, go forth to learn.'"

Another humorous aspect of the game is in the name of the games church magazine icon, which is 'The Buddy' instead of 'The Friend', according to Hale.

The characters also represent some humor, because they are all represented as aliens.

"One of the ships may come through doing genealogy work and will say later 'Oh my great-great grandfather was a fish'- or something like that because all the characters are from alien characters," Hale said. "So we're not trying to be strictly doctrinal here; we're supposed to have a lot of fun with it."

In order to succeed in the game, the player must be able to meet the demands of the visitors, he said.

Bethanne Anderson from the Illustration department at BYU said the game doesn't sound too appealing to her.

"...There are things that should be games and things that probably shouldn't," she said.

Cynthia Doxey, Assistant Professor in the Church History and Doctrine department felt neutral about the video game marketing to the LDS population.

"If you're trying to help people because you have a good idea then why not market to that group of people?" Doxey said.



Copyright Brigham Young University 15 Sep 2004