As a game designer with a focus on the educational, one of the important things to consider is how to best present content, not only in terms of the educational aspects, but in terms of density and continuity, and how believably I can work in the elements to the game.
Category: Project Update
Project Update: Explicit and Incidental Education
One of the things I noticed about the educational games I used to play as a kid is that they were designed around education. Every last part of their being was educational, except for sometimes a tacked on narrative that served to get players to think that there was a larger objective (Climb Reading Mountain! Rescue the Polygnomials!) in the game while the truth is that there was actually more of a focus on getting as much material to the players as possible in a short amount of time, guaranteeing that the watchful eye of parents saw only educational material on the screen. Not all of these games were bad, at least not from my younger perspective, and there were some that were actually pretty good, but these ones tended to do well in spite of themselves. Continue reading “Project Update: Explicit and Incidental Education”
Project Update: Educational Game Prototype
So I’ve been messing around with Stencyl; it’s a game creator for people who don’t really like coding or vector graphics but want to make highly-portable games most frequently used for flash game creation (at least, when I’ve seen it used).
I’ve mentioned that I’ve had an interest in educational gaming before (indeed, this week’s game design post was on this topic), so here’s my prototype for a game that is equal parts vocabulary builder, spelling test, and typing tutor. There’s no “game” elements yet, but you can type in the fun words (all of which are about adorable little furry animals).
This was actually made on June 10, so this is just over a week old. Next week, check back to see the evolution and the actual properly named game!
Project Update: Blender Cartoon Compositor
I messed around with a composting test in Blender a while back, and while it was good I thought I’d go back and do it again.
Continue reading “Project Update: Blender Cartoon Compositor”