The interactive carpet offers great possibilities: to walk physically along a path drawing itself under the players’ feet is a really involving experience. All the senses come into play and you are captured by the plot.
The carpet enlightens and tells a story through the images, the music, the words.
The children move on the carpet and activate the sensors hidden under its surface, operating the software that activates the multimedia effects, with the help of a projector placed upright to the carpet.
It’s like walking inside a cartoon.

The interactive carpet lends itself to many playful didactic and scenic applications.
It unites the mind dynamism to the body movement , thus overcoming the limit often due to the use of the computer, that is the static position of the user who usually moves almost his/her hands only. The isolation of the user is also surmounted because the carpet is at the same time “ playground” for many subjects, stage and scenery of a dream and an adventure.These are the potentialities.

To face facts, on the contrary, a low budget is always the limit of schools. For this version, we have thus inserted only two sensors under the carpet, organising a story with double choices.
The carpet tells a story that, in the crucial moments, stops and offers the players a double option. The answers are not right or wrong (it’s a game, not a test): answers instead exist which take along a path and answers which get through another way.

The story proposed by the carpet is inspired by the historical short stories by the writer Nadia Vittori and it is located at the times of republican Rome, just before Punic War II.
Amilcare Barca threats Sagunto in Spain, a city allied to Rome, and the Senate must decide: war upon Carthage or peace?
Children are invited to choose but they have to do it according to the role they have chosen to assume.
Indeed , there are the senators, the small landowners – future warriors, the tradesmen and the Etruscan cities.
It is interesting to notice how every category defends its interests with all its might and how the discussion inflames to bring the decisions in favour of one side or the other.
How does the game end? Almost always with Rome’s victory and Carthage’s defeat.( there have also been some more fantastic and alternative conclusions like Rome as a colony of Carthage or an Etruscan empire formed by the cities ).

But the true aim of the game is another: to stimulate children to find values in order to support their cause. In the specific context, the causes of the rise of the latifundium in Rome come out and some causes of the social crisis are identified.

The multimedia support contributes both to aggregate the group playing around the carpet and to raise the attention thanks to the animations.
The carpet suddenly creates a space which catalyzes curiosity and creates collective ties and emotions.