Sol 6: Mars Storyline and the Engaging Character Series

TL;DR: A storyline is an essential and motivating layer in a gamified classroom. It adds purpose to the academic tasks and connects the students with the curriculum.
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What storyline structure do I use and how does this increase student engagement?
Layered onto my gamified classroom is the storyline. The goal of this layer is to hook students' attention and keep them on the line. The story follows the classic hero's journey with a mission to Mars theme.

Here is the general storyline
following the structure above without giving too much away (in case my students are reading this). This journey begins with the students, the character, as ordinary people. All of a sudden they are introduced to Mission Specialist Christa, who is a witty fresh-out-of-college geology nerd who is training to be one of the first astronauts on Mars. The students are called to action to help her train for the mission. They are not too excited about this but decide to help anyway. The next step, transformation, forces the students to join the Mars crew due to an emergency or urgent event. As they travel through space on their mission they will encounter many challenges, which align with performance events in class, and need to be overcome. The storyline comes to a climax where the students must complete the mission objectives or else face a mission failure. As stress and nerves start to ease the end of the storyline wanes and the students return back to normal as it began.

How do I implement this in the everyday physics classroom?
A couple times a week I give a video update from Mission Specialist Christa. She connects the storyline to their classroom activities while providing background information and progress on the mission. So far the students have really connected with Mission Specialist Christa and seem to really get riled up about her challenges and wittiness. 

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My gushy thoughts and 2 cents: 
I am really surprised to the extent that the 9th grade students have really responded to the main character, Mission Specialist Christa. She can talk to them at their own level. A way I could not talk to them as a teacher. So they really connect with her. The extra work to create this layer of gamification is rather enjoyable. I am having a lot of fun with this and the storyline is adding a sense of purpose to everything the students are doing.