I was really excited to create a teaching game, particularly because I loved using games in my classroom as a high school educator. I am comfortable orienting games around learning, and enjoy coming up with quick ways to increase class engagement using simple mechanics. Going into this process, I was mostly curious about what we could teach. Though I was a little overwhelmed by all the possibilities, I was really happy to end up making a game about biology/fish (and loved using all of our group members’ skills to develop out the game).
I quickly realized throughout this process that most of the games I’ve built for teaching have little of the depth or aesthetic consideration needed for a full game development process. Classroom games rarely need to be replayable, and the focus is so often on content that many other factors can end up being set aside. I learned through this project that there’s so many more factors to take into account when it comes to a powerful game that people want to play casually. Particularly, I learned that I default heavily to narrative and learning outcomes, and it’s really exciting to try all kinds of mechanics that can help tell a story for you.
Throughout our playtests and development process, we tried out so many different things, and all of them came with trade-offs. One mechanic would introduce more choice, but reduced some kinds of competition, while another mechanic would closely match an ecosystem feature but end up being too dry/boring to keep. In all this testing, I found myself really needing the physical pieces of the game to keep track of what we were doing. I was always pulling out markers and scissors and producing a little version of what we were talking about just so I could see it!
I loved working on the game and was endlessly interested in trying to make it fun and functional. It’s also been a long time since I got to exercise so many creative/design muscles, and I am getting back into it. Using Figma and Canva, drawing, building things, and ideating has been an engaging and high-growth process for me throughout these weeks.
Going forward, I will value short intervals between playtests highly. Every time we introduced a new thing, it was awesome to try it and see what happened. Making a lot of changes between tests makes it harder to see what is worth keeping, and you never know what problems might emerge until you see the dynamics. I also think I’ll reflect often on how doing and thinking can be more fused, in my life and in my teaching. I end up often in a stilted pattern of “think-think-do” or “think-do-think” and have much more value after this for the idea of doing as thinking, or something like “do-make-do-play-think/reflect.” I can’t wait to grow more as a designer as I try making new games, and I am learning so much so quickly.