Game Design Final Projects

Here are the finished games from the Game Design Unit! The children were so pleased with their creations, and I was amazed at what they were able to accomplish! Abe's game, above, has you trying to climb up to the top of a pyramid using "rope" cards of various types. You can be helped or hindered by other players using "power" cards. He really thought the game out and made a lot of improvements throughout the process, and he was meticulous in his crafting of the game board and the game cards. I love the final result!

Abe's cute game pieces (made from baked polymer clay)

Daisy couldn't bear to be left out, so she made her own little "game" and game pieces. I love that little pink die! (In fact, I made that little pink die!) She and Junie had fun just rolling the die and moving around on the game board, no rules necessary. :)

Seb's game is a maze that has a different start and finish spot each time you play it. You collect treasure as you go through the maze. There are portals that can move you across the board in one jump, but you have to make sure you land on enough spaces to collect the available treasure. It's really fun! His written instructions are clear and concise too, which is no easy thing to accomplish. And I love the way his game board turned out. He had a vision of what he wanted it to look like and he did a great job realizing that vision!

Malachi's colorful game is so cute, and you never quite play it the same way twice. He worked so hard painting his game board and shaping his little game pieces, and thinking out the complicated backstory of the game! I love it.

I think my favorite part is seeing the children playing their games together and having such fun doing it. I hope they will have good memories of these times and that they will enjoy playing their games for many years to come!

Game Design Unit Schedule and Lesson Plan

Sam didn't have to go to work during the week between Christmas and New Year's, and he'd been wanting to teach one of our units, so we happily took this opportunity! He decided to teach a unit on Game Design. He has been designing games for many years now, as he got his first job in the game industry at age 16! He works at Disney doing concept art now, but he stays quite involved with game design and he loves it. So, this was a perfect chance for him to share some of his knowledge with the rest of us. 

Sam had his own lesson plan for this unit, but I took notes as he talked and tried to fill in most of the things he talked about on my usual spreadsheet.

Ky pretends to be a jumping bean, moving from pillow to pillow

I thought it was really interesting how many aspects of designing games can be applied to designing . . . anything! The concepts of flexibility, usability, aesthetics, target audience, reinforcement, etc. seem like they will be really useful in a whole bunch of areas! And Sam is just a good teacher, so he could probably talk about practically anything and it would be interesting. :)

Sam had the boys each design a game for their Final Project, which they worked on throughout the week. They spent a LOT of time testing and re-working and refining the concepts, and Sam helped them think through potential problems and come up with better redesigns as they went. It was really cool to see what they came up with and how they improved their ideas. And the finished games actually turned out really fun. I think we will keep playing them for many years!

Some of Sam's teaching charts

Abe working on his game---before and after being shorn :)

First draft of Abe's instructions

Seb's prototype

Malachi's instructions

Game testing with Daddy (Seb was sick this day---you can see him sitting wanly on the heater vent in the background) :(

For their final games, the boys really worked hard to make nice, professional-looking (well, relatively speaking :)) products. Sam let them do all kinds of things that I'm usually too lazy to allow---things like painting their boards with craft paint and sculpting game pieces and dice out of Sculpey. They spent hours and hours getting everything just right.