We started them off with a simple card game I brought in (which would be used later for the main activity as well). It’s like that Celebrity Heads game, where one person has a celebrity or person’s name attached to their forehead, and they have to ask the other people questions, hunting for hints, so they can guess what their person is. This game used a whole bunch of objects as well, so the broad scope of potential guesses was huge.

We chatted about the challenges we faced in the guessing game, and also explored how we could adapt the rules to be simpler, or more fun. All part of the process of designing game mechanics for our upcoming board games.

Board Game Tryouts, Roundtables - I brought in a wide selection of card/board games for the students to try and investigate, with the grand purpose of them choosing a template game for their own game design. Due to the relatively small time I have with them for designing these games, and the inevitable overdesigning kids do when they design games, I thought to push them into choosing a ‘template’ game, like one of the games I brought in on this day. The games I brought were; Tsuro, Settlers of Catan, Ecosystem: Coral Reef, Muffin Time, Selfish: Space Edition, Once Upon a Time, and my two games; Frodge and Bin Off. The games I chose were intended to be alternatives to what they might usually know, like monopoly or UNO. We wanted to avoid a bunch of monopoly clones, forcing the students to learn new games and figure out ways to adapt these into an educational bushfire safety game. I explained concepts and processes for using existing games as templates for our own designs, and how the students can swap out graphics and adjust values, but keep the overarching game mechanics intact. This helps them to gradually understand how a game is put together, and how all the moving parts interact, as they experiment with fiddling with those moving parts.

We conducted the usual Creative Communities building activity, but swapped back to making habitats for this week (since last week they drew animals for their previous week’s habitats). We pushed them to choose more unique habitats this time, so we didn’t get another bunch of bee hives!

The overarching project is still engaging the students, even if they’re finding it challenging. We will carefully monitor their progress to ensure we can have a finished prototype by the end of the term, and at least some workable progress by the end of the creative schools program.

The game design concepts are proving challenging for them, perhaps a little too challenging. Some students will definitely struggle with coming up with their own unique game, but we will adjust future plans (maybe scrapping the instructional video idea) to ensure they can finish at least their game.

The board game round table activity on this day was ultimately too short, and didn’t give the students enough time to truly sink their teeth/minds into the games on offer. Kirsti will give the students extra time during the week to look into the games and make more conscious/informed decisions on which they will use as a reference.

I use a specific worksheet for when I conduct board game design programs like this, so we will print it out and have it available for the students by Thursday.

Still aiming to have the board games available for play with parents and wider school community later on in the term.