Empires and Interconnections

Introducing Empires and Interconnections, the newest edition in the award-winning History Adventures digital learning series, now available for iPad, fully reimagined using the powerful Unity3D game engine. This fully interactive, animated digital learning product represents a fresh approach to history education, designed for today’s digital generation. Empires and Interconnections features many hours of multimodal content, combining mobile entertainment with the power of story—bringing the pages of history to life!

An Age of Exploration, Gunpowder, and International Trade
Empires and Interconnections explores the dynamic period from 1450-1750, when the world got smaller. Epic empires expanded, and followed trade routes, as European nations battled to control as much of the world’s wealth as possible. The dark side of this explosion of wealth and consolidated power and influence, meant enslavement and ruin for some, as Europeans unknowingly brought diseases that killed millions and meanwhile initiated the gruesome, inhumane Atlantic Slave Trade. Some nations remained autonomous and isolated, such as the Tokugawa of Japan, but it took huge effort to throw off this tidal wave of global interconnectedness.

A World of Characters
We begin our journey in 1453, as Ioannina, a woman of Byzantine and Turkish ancestry, experiences the Ottoman Siege of Constantinople, led by Sultan Mehmed II. The battle hangs by a thread, but ultimately the ancient capital falls, heralding the final death knell of the Roman Empire, and the rise of the Islamic empires of the Middle East, whose control of this critical crossroads will push the emerging mercantile empires of Western Europe to search for a Western route to Asia. Our next character, Luis Felipe Gutierrez, is a Spanish adventurer, who dreams of achieving wealth and glory in the New World–while spreading the word of God–as Columbus, Cortez, and Pizarro had done before him. In the disease-stricken, war-torn mountains and jungles of Peru, he finds instead madness, confusion, and death.

In Tokugawa Japan, a young woman, Ishi, is a key advisor to the powerful warlord, Tokugawa, who strives to achieve the first Shogunate. She will advise Tokugawa on how to deal with these strange, fanatical European missionaries: should she grant clemency, or should she deal with them harshly, and with violence, to stamp out their loo