Game Design Exploration 2 - Adding a New Theme to Love Letter

This is the second part of my game design exploration based on the game Love Letter*. Be sure you and your students are familiar with Part 1 before you work through the activity below.

In this second step, students will add a new theme to the simple, fun game Love Letter. The theme will be based on a topic you are studying in class. This will work best in a language arts or social studies class, but you could definitely use it in other classes too.

In applying the theme, students will discuss people, events and other elements of your course content.

What Is Theme in a Game?

Theme is what the game is about. Not all games have a strong theme, but many popular ones do. The theme of Risk is world conquest. The theme of Monopoly is making money in real estate.

If you're familiar with the original Love Letter, that theme was to deliver a love letter to the Princess.

See Part 2 of my first game design exploration for more examples of theme in games.

Examples of variations on the Love Letter game

Love Letter has been such a popular game across the world that it already has some new themes and other variations based on it. Here are a few you could show students in class. You can click on some of the images on the pages below to see the similarities and differences between versions:

• Love Letter: Batman
• Love Letter: The Hobbit
• Lost Legacy - There are actually many Lost Legacy games, all of which use and extend the simple rules of Love Letter.

Adding a New Theme to Love Letter

After discussing themes in games and looking at the different versions of Love Letter, it's time for students to add a new theme to the game. The theme will be based on the lesson topic they've studied in class. 

The special Game Design Planning Sheet linked below will guide them through the process. Here are some things to keep in mind before assigning the planning sheet:

• The students will choose a theme that's related to your topic. The lesson might be about a book they just read, like The Odyssey, or maybe it will be about a historical event like The War of 1812. While they could use those entire topics as the theme, they also could choose a specific part of those topics. For example, they might focus on a climatic scene of the book or a particularly interesting battle of the war.
• The planning sheet will require them to name each card as something from their theme and to rename the tokens. Though not necessarily required, the sheet also suggests they make other changes to the effects and rules.
• The document has a link to the components for a very basic template of Love Letter cards. If students click it, they will get a copy of it as a Google Slides file. They can type their changes onto the cards (and they will print them in a later stage of the game).
• There are optional ideas listed on the second page of the planning sheet for students who want to explore game design further. Use them as appropriate for the age of your students and the needs of this project.

Click here to get a copy the Game Design Planning Sheet in your Google Drive.

In the next stage, we will look at how to make a playable copy of the new version of Love Letter. We'll also present some options for testing the games in class.

*Love Letter was designed by Seiji Kanai and published by Alderac Entertainment Group. I have permission from the publisher to use their game as I have in this exploration. Please consider supporting them by buying a copy of the game that your students can play as they learn the basic rules.

Game Design Exploration 2 - Love Letter

Several months ago I created a game design exploration that required students to redesign a simple game so it fit a topic they were studying. I'm now working on several Game Design Project Packs that include games of different types.

While most of these Project Packs will use simple games I created myself, this second installment uses a very popular new game called Love Letter. I do have permission from the publisher (Alderac Entertainment Group) to use the game this way.

For this first part of the game design exploration, students would learn how to play Love Letter and they'd play a few rounds.

The General Idea of the Project

You will want to know the overall flow of the activity. You can see my previous exploration as an example, or this short outline should suffice.

• Students study some topic in class. It could be anything really, but these activities lend themselves to people and events. Language arts and social studies classes are a good fit. Some of this part can happen concurrently with the following stages.
• Students learn and play a simple game.
• Using a planning sheet, they will apply a theme and possibly some new rules to that game so it fits the topic they're studying.
• Depending on how much time you want them to spend on this project, you can follow up with some playtesting and further development.
• A reflection sheet allows students to think deeply about the course topic and game design in general.
• Further resources are available for students who want to dig deeper and possibly print a quality copy of their game.

Getting a Copy of the Game

Like all the games in these projects, Love Letter uses few components and it can be played in about 15 - 30 minutes. In fact, the entire game has only 16 cards in it! (It's in a genre of modern games known as micro-games.)

I strongly encourage teachers to buy a copy of the game for students to play. The original Love Letter has spawned several different variations including a Batman and a Hobbit version. All are essentially the same and any would work for this project.  Here's one link to the original version for less than $10. (Just don't mistakenly get one of the more expensive, harder to find early editions of the game.)

I do have a template (linked below) to the basic cards. Students will use that template in Part 2 of this exploration, but it would be possible to play the game by printing that template on card stock.

How to Play

Here is a video I created (with some help from my wife for narration) that shows how to play the game. You could show this in class or just watch it yourself and explain the game to the students. All the rules take less than two minutes to explain.

If you want to read the full rules, here is a PDF from the publisher.

Playing the Game

I recommend for this activity that the students only play the game enough to get the general idea. They don't have to play a full game, as described in the video. A few rounds should be sufficient.

As I mentioned above, I did make this template so students can modify the game in the second part of this activity. If you want to use this to make a very plain (and boring!) version of the game to use in class, you could print it on card stock and cut out the cards. (More information will be given later for ways students can make prototypes of their game without using card stock.)

Next...

See the second part of the activity here. In it, students explore underlying concepts and elements of your lesson topic by adding a new theme to Love Letter.

Two Great Tools for Creative Presentation Options - Think beyond PowerPoint

Update 11-25-2016:  I still love Adobe Spark, but I've learned a couple things since I used it more in the classroom this year. First, users have to enter a date of birth to sign up. Students under 13 will not get access. Also, we have run into problems with the video feature on Chromebooks. That option seems to work best on regular computers.

Teachers often ask me for presentation options that get them beyond PowerPoint. Adobe Spark fills this need perfectly!

I just finished new videos for easy, creative presentations and projects using Adobe Spark. I showed these (and Posts, the third option) to teachers a couple weeks ago and they took to it immediately. It came out in mid-May, too late for me to push it big in my district, but I suspect it will be a very popular tool this new school year.

Keep in mind both of these tools should be useful for teachers and students. They work great on Chromebooks or any computer. iPad apps are available too.

I strongly recommend that every teacher learn these tools before school starts up. Believe me, they won't take long to get the basics.

This first video is an overview and some tips for creating what they call Pages. These are very attractive webpages that can be used to tell a story, report on a classroom activity or just about anything else you'd make that uses pictures and text.

The video is below, but here's the sample page I created and that you'll see in the first part of the video.

This next tutorial features the Adobe Spark Videos. The tool is by far the simplest one I've found for making an attractive digital slideshow. Even adding narration is a breeze.

You might be interested in these related posts:

• Adobe Spark Posts - The third tool in the Adobe Spark suite is called a Post. It's a picture with text. 
• Using Adobe Spark for Making Narrated Slideshows - This video shows how to go from Google Slides to a narrated digital slideshow using Adobe Spark Video.

Question and Answer Sessions with Game Designers

I worked with students in our game design virtual club to generate a list of questions to send to game designers. Here are two replies that I received. In each video the designer answers several questions.

The first response is from John du Bois. He is the designer of Avignon: A Clash of Popes, a game that was successful on Kickstarter earlier this year.

He answered these questions from my group, as well as some from a game design class taught by Kevin Crowther:

• How do you know if a game you are working on is good?
• Do the rules of games have to follow certain guidelines or can they be however the designer wants them to be?

The second video is from David Whitcher. Several of David's games have been published, with the most recent one, Star Trek: Five Year Mission, making a big splash at GenCon last year.

He answered these questions and a few from the other class:

• What kinds of games do you think publishers want? And what are some types you think they don't want?
• What software and books do I need to get started?

David told me later that the free online class he referred to is from this site. He said it is for both digital and non-digital games and it should be good for beginners. He did point out that he disagreed with the way they used the term "playtesting". Both David and I (in all materials I've written for this blog) use it to refer to the process of testing the game.

Using Adobe Spark to Add Text to Images

A quick "tech project" that can sum up the learning or share good ideas is what some people call "infopics". Students simply add some text to a picture.

I've written about several tools that will let you do this easily. Now Adobe has released Spark, a creative tool that makes this (as well as some other digital creations) simple with very attractive results.

I created this video tutorial that shows the process.

There are Adobe Spark apps for iOS and Andorid as well. Each app creates one of the three project types the web app can create. This particular project is called the Post.

If you're interested in more resources about this image with text project, see my Project Pack about it here. The post with all my Project Packs can be found at this link.

Game Design Virtual Club - Part 4 - Making a prototype and testing it

Here's my fourth installment in my series of videos for the virtual club I'm running in Google Classroom. This time I talk about my favorite part of game design - making prototypes and testing them.

Most of the video is about making a quick, playable copy of the game. I only touch on the iterative process of testing, tweaking and playing some more.

Our school year is coming to a close, but if we get time my next video will be about creating a print-and-play version of a game.

Creating Narrated Slideshows and Digital Stories on a Chromebook Using Adobe Spark

One of the more popular tips and tutorials I've created has been how to create a narrated slideshow on a Chromebook. I used to use WeVideo for this, but last week Adobe released a tool called Spark. I was hoping it would be a simpler tool than WeVideo.

I tried out its features for importing images, adding narration and exporting the finished video and I'm happy to say it has worked very easily so far. I made a quick screen recording of the process so I could share it with teachers and students in my district.

This is new for all of us, but in case this helps others to get started with Spark, here's the video:

If you are interested in this post, you might also like my Tech Project Packs. Each one is a collection of resources for tech projects you can use in any class or subject.

Game Design Virtual Club - Part 3 - Developing your ideas

I've been running a virtual club about game design for some middle school students. The first post in the series is here.

Below I have the video I created for the third step in the game design process. In it I show students how to use my Game Idea Template to develop their ideas.

(If you're interested in seeing the template, it's here. I wrote this post about it a couple years ago.)

Click here to see the next post in this series - How to make a prototype and test it

Quick Start Tech Projects for Any Class

After two years of helping a lot of teachers get started with different tech projects, I finally got smart and combined the many existing tech project resources I've created.

My goal was to save time for teachers. Having everything in one document (or at least linked from one document) can cut out a lot of emails or our initial planning meetings, since now they can find these documents on one single webpage.

Instead of taking me out of the picture, it allows them to ask me the questions that are most relevant to their class a lot more quickly. 

Each of these "Tech Project Packs" focuses on one type of final product, like a blog or an audio recording. It answers important questions such as:

• What is this type of project best for?
• What tools are needed?
• What are some common challenges?
• What tutorials do you have for it?
• What should I include in the directions?
• How can we share it beyond the classroom?

We are a Google Apps for Education district and most students are using Chromebooks.

Here are four packs to start with. More will be added in the upcoming week. 

• Images with Text - A very quick project that can be adapted to any subject
• Infographics - Create informational "digital posters" with Piktochart
• Blogs - Good for getting started using Blogger
• Audio Recordings - A simple process for creating audio recordings on a Chromebook or laptop

If you have any suggestions or requests or if you see problems with the documents or links, please let me know.

Game Design Virtual Club - Part 2

I wrote last week about the virtual club I'm running through Google Classroom. It's for a small group of middle school students. Our goal is to design games and to publish them in a print-and-play format.

Here's the second video in the series of short lessons I'm taking them through. This time I talk about ideas and the importance of writing them down.

The next step will be to develop some of the more promising ideas. You can see that post here.

We are also in the process of creating a list of questions to send to successful game designers. When we agree on the questions, I will send those to some of my friends who have enjoyed success with game design. I'll post their videos here as I get them.

Running a Game Design Virtual Club in Google Classroom

This week we started the virtual club
through Google Classroom!

I recently got the idea to run a virtual club at our middle school. I posted a survey on our website and let the students choose between three topics. Game design won out over a media production club and computer programming. We started the club this week.

Since most of my experience with game design has been with the non-digital variety, that has been our focus. The goal is to have them make a print-and-play game by the end of the school year.

I run the club through Google Classroom. In case anyone else would be interested in a similar venture, here is some of the content I have been sharing with the students.

I started out with my intro video below. As the it indicates, I think the first step in making games is to learn about as many games as possible. Normally we'd accomplish that by playing them together and discussing them.

Since we only meet online, I have been using videos from Tom Vasel's vast archive of game reviews to introduce them to new types of games. Tom does a great job of explaining the rules quickly and I very much appreciate that I can always trust his content to be appropriate for students.

Along with my video and Tom's reviews, I have posted some discussion questions in Classroom to get them thinking about what makes a good game. Soon I will get them started on generating ideas for their own games.

I also have contacted some game designer friends, all of whom have had more success than I have. I asked if they'd record a brief video answering questions that the students have. Some already got back with me, so I am excited to see how that works out. I know the students will appreciate their involvement.

Here's the intro video that I created. (As I mention in the video, it was early in the morning when I recorded it!) I'll also list the videos I posted to show the students new games.

Dice Tower Reviews from Tom Vasel that I have used so far:

• Worker placement games - Lords of Waterdeep
• Micro games - Love Letter
• Modern abstract strategy games - Yinsh
• Deck building games - Star Realms

Click here to see part 2 in the series. In that step I show students the importance of keeping a game design notebook.

Classroom Creativity Game - The Haiku Game

This post contains a link to the template you need to play this game, but you'll also want to see this post  which explains how to run these types of games with your class using Google Apps.

Many of my most popular posts on this blog are the creativity games and exercises I created and shared about four years ago. I am translating some of those into a Google Slides format, which I hope will allow more people to enjoy it.

When played as a classroom game, this game allows 3 - 5 creative students to compete to make the best haiku based on random words. The class participates by voting on their favorite. I've seen middle school and high school students have a lot of fun with these games.

I also will list a few suggestions at the end of this post about other ways to use the activity, possibly with less time or allowing more students to create the fun answers.

First, here's the flow of the game when used with the whole class.

1. Choose 3 to 5 students to be the contestants in the game. They should sit at the front of the room. They'll need either paper or a computer, depending on how you want them to share their riddle answers with you.
2. The teacher draws two random words.
3. The contestants get two minutes to write their best haiku that contains those two words. Each student shares his or her haiku with the teacher.
4. The teacher reads them and they are entered in the game slide so the students can see them.
5. The students in the class vote on the their favorite haiku (using a classroom response system or possibly Google Forms).
6. Points are awarded to the contestants based on the number of votes they received.
7. Steps 2 - 6 are repeated three or four times, then scores are totaled to determine a winner.

Here is the Google Slides presentation that you'll need to play this game or to do any of the activities listed below.

Click to have a copy of the Google Slides presentation added to your Google Drive. 

Video Overview

This 4 minute video shows how to play a similar game. It's about answering a riddle instead of making a haiku, but the way you carry it out in class is the same. (If you're interested, here's the post about that game.)

Tips and suggestions for other ways to use the activity

• Usually the students make funny poems, but you could require different criteria for the "best" poem.
• Have some things to show the rest of the class while the contestants write their poems. 
• It's easy to change some of the words that I have in the game, or you can just add a few. Pick things from your school, like your football team or the cafeteria. If you're feeling brave, put your name in the mix! This gives students a chance to practice being funny while still being respectful.
• Have the other students write their haiku too. After the vote, have some of them share what they wrote if they want.
• If you don't want to devote much class time to the game, just draw two words at the end of class and have all students make a haiku for homework. You can select your top 5 and have them vote on the best one as a warm-up in a later class.
• Be sure to read my post about creativity exercises that can be used before playing this game.

Student Samples from the Game Design Exploration

Back in December I created a game design exploration activity that could be adapted to fit the schedule and content of many classes. I posted four articles about it, starting with the introduction here.

Recently I worked with some middle school students who created games using the template I provide. Their topic was Wonder, by R. J. Palacio.

Due to time constraints, students were only able to complete the cards and play their own game. I also assigned two reflection activities that were adapted from the one in this post.

You can see their sample cards here:

• Group 1's cards
• Group 2's cards

Students definitely enjoyed the activity from start to finish. It was a welcome change of pace that they looked forward to each morning. I heard plenty of discussion about the book as they tried to think of titles for the cards. 

When they played their games, I asked them a few things about how the actions on the cards related to the theme of the story. They generally could explain it easily, but sometimes the action would be inconsistent with the story.

For example, when the chips represented Happiness in one game and sometimes players would receive this Happiness by actions that were not happy. We talked about this briefly. Sometimes the contradiction is unavoidable given the simple nature of the game. Reflecting on these themes of the story serves an important purpose even if the cards don't make complete sense at times.

A couple tips:

• Because the game was taking longer to play than I hoped, I put less chips in the center than what the rules called for. I also had students take four chips to start rather than just three. Students could also tweak the actions on the cards to make the game go faster.
• Rather than printing on card stock, I printed their cards on paper. I cut them out and inserted each in a card sleeve (available at any game store or here) along with an old playing card to keep it stiff. This is how many of us make early stage prototypes, so it's good for aspiring young designers to pick up this tip.

Using Google Tools for Classroom Creativity Games

A couple weeks ago I wrote about a creativity game template I made in Google Slides. (Read that post for details on how the games are played with a class.) Making the games in this flexible tool should allow a lot more teachers to take advantage of what they offer.

Now I'm going a step further and showing how to run the entire game with Google tools. These are the ones I'll be using:

• Google Slides for the game template
• Google Docs for the contestants to submit their responses to the teacher
• Google Forms for the class to vote on their best response
• Google Classroom for getting the Form out to the class when it's time to vote

I'll explain the process with two videos. The first shows how to prepare to play.

And this second video shows how to run a round of the game with the class. 

Note: In case it wasn't clear from the video, the responses I copied from the three shared documents would be written by the contestants after they see the prompt for the round. They would each have their document open on a Chromebook or other device. When they're done, you copy and paste them into the slideshow so the class can see them for a vote.

Creativity Game with Google Slides - Why Did the Chicken...?

This post contains a link to the template you need to play this game, but you'll also want to see this one which explains how to run the game with your class.

Many of my most popular posts on this blog are the creativity games and exercises I created and shared about four years ago. I finally translated one of those into a Google Slides format, which I hope will allow more people to enjoy it.

When played as a classroom game, it allows 3 - 5 creative students to compete to make the best answers to random riddles. The class participates by voting on their favorite. I've seen middle school and high school students enjoy this game.

I also will list a few suggestions at the end of this post about other ways to use the activity, possibly with less time or allowing more students to create the fun answers.

First, here's the flow of the game when used with the whole class. 

1. Choose 3 to 5 students to be the contestants in the game. They should sit at the front of the room. They'll need either paper or a computer, depending on how you want them to share their riddle answers with you.
2. The teacher draws a random riddle as shown in the video below.
3. The contestants get two minutes to write their best answer to the riddle. Those answers and shared with the teacher.
4. The teacher reads the answers that were submitted and they are entered in the game slide.
5. The students in the class vote on the their favorite answer (using a classroom response system or possibly Google Forms).
6. Points are awarded to the contestants based on the number of votes they received.
7. Steps 2 - 6 are repeated three or four times, then scores are totaled to determine a winner.

Here is the Google Slides presentation that you'll need to play this game or to do any of the activities listed below.

Click to have a copy of the Google Slides presentation added to your Google Drive. 

Video Overview

This 4 minute video shows the basics of creating the random riddles and playing the game with a class.

Tips and suggestions for other ways to use the activity

• Have some things to show the class while the students write their random riddles. 
• It's easy to change some of the words that I have in the game, or you can just add a few. Pick things from your school, like your football team or the cafeteria. If you're feeling brave, put your name in the mix! This gives students a chance to practice being funny while still being respectful.
• Have the other students write riddle answers too. After the vote, have some of them share their answers if they want.
• If you don't want to devote much class time to the game, just generate a random riddle at the end of class and have all students answer it for homework. You can select your top 5 and have them vote on the best one as a warm-up in a later class.
• Be sure to read my post about creativity exercises that can be used before playing this game.

Game Design for Any Subject, Google Apps and More - Top Posts of 2015

2015 was an exciting year for helping teachers beyond my local district! In this post I will list some of the top tips, activities and resources from this blog over the past 12 months.

First, just a thought about my other blog. I love sharing resources and tips here at CG&T, but my heart has been in at my Teaching Like an Artist blog. I had a great year with some conferences, inspirational posts and even a book (digital and print). Be sure to check out my top posts there and consider following that work in 2016!

Now on to the great resources that got the most attention this year…
I ran a few PD sessions in the summer and these popular tips and tipsheets were a result:

• 4 Tipsheets for Navigating Google Classroom
• Updated and compiled resources for making comics using Google Slides
• Part of the above resources, but great to highlight on it's own - How to create comics using just the Google Slides app on your favorite mobile device

Here's an important post that introduces teachers to 10 simple, free tools for showing off any project (even non-tech projects) beyond the classroom. They range from simple to more involved.

I developed these two methods for making a narrated slideshow presentation using just a Chromebook.

• This simpler way uses Google Slides and SnagIt. (This hasn't yet been a "top post", but it is a great option that goes with this often requested presentation method.)
• This more involved method was my guest post on Free Tech for Teachers in June!

And these are my favorite quick tips from the year:

• How to record an audio "podcast" quickly and easily on a Chromebook using Twisted Wave
• Marking up images with a Chromebook and Google Drawings
• Two fast, simple tools for adding text to images

New Game Design Resources
Any teacher knows students today love games and many of them want to make games. I posted two popular series about creating games design this year. These are both non-digital game activities.

This first one is a “make a game in an hour” activity that I’ve done with designers. I started with a big picture look at what I and others have learned from making games.

Game Design in the Classroom - What I learned, what others learned, the "game jam" style activity and thoughts on developing and publishing

Later in the year I created this series, which one designer called a “baby step” into game design. All the resources are created in Google Docs for easy modification and sharing with students. It’s a flexible introduction to making games that integrates with many subjects. The flow of the project is...

• Learn the basic game
• Modify the game by adding a theme and possibly other rules
• Test the games
• Reflect on the process (This step is the key to tying it all together with your course content.)

Also new in 2015, I created this Game Design Page as a convenient place to find all my best classroom game design resources.

Game Design Exploration Part 4 - Reflection

This is the fourth part of a series for a classroom game design project that can be used in many classes and subjects. The whole project is based on a very simple game I created. Students will modify that game so it's about the topic they are studying in class.

Here's the flow of the overall project. Each of these stages has its own post, which you can access by clicking the link.

• Learn and play Roll-n-Flip - Students need to learn to play the basic game of Roll-n-Flip first. It should take one class period or less to learn the game and to play it a couple times. 
• Redesign Roll-n-Flip - Next, students will modify the game by adding a theme (based on your lesson) and possibly other rules. This can take more or less than one class period, depending on how much you want them to develop their version of the game.
• Play and improve their game - In this step students test the game their group made and then at least one game created by another group. You could also give them time to improve their game based on feedback. This process can be a class period or more, depending how much you want to focus on game design.
• Reflection - For the last part of the activity, students will reflect on what they learned about your course content and about game design. This reflection "seals the deal" for the learning, making this possibly the most important of step of the project.

_________________

This final stage of the project can be the most important, as it requires students to reflect upon what they learned about the lesson topic for your course as well as game design. In it each student Students will complete the document at the link below. 

Do not give students the document until they worked through Parts 1 - 3 of the activity (each easily accessible at the links above). That means they should have created a game based on Roll-n-Flip, tested it and played at least one game created by another group before they try to answer the questions. 

If you modified the activity in Parts 1 - 3 of the project, you might have to change the questions in the document to fit what your students experienced.

Through reflection, students should gain deeper insights from the activity. Their responses also provide you with a look at what they've learned about the lesson topic. That can be used to guide followup instruction or class discussion.

The reflection questions in the document come in three parts:

• The activity itself
• The game design process
• The lesson topic and how they connected elements of it to their game theme

You can find the Game Design Exploration Reflection Sheet here.

Game Design Exploration - Part 3 - Testing the Games

This is the third part of a series for a classroom game design project that can be used in many classes and subjects. The whole project is based on a very simple game I created. Students will modify that game so it's about the topic they are studying in class.

Here's the flow of the overall project. Each of these stages has its own post, which you can access by clicking the link.

• Learn and play Roll-n-Flip - Students need to learn to play the basic game of Roll-n-Flip first. It should take one class period or less to learn the game and to play it a couple times. 
• Redesign Roll-n-Flip - Next, students will modify the game by adding a theme (based on your lesson) and possibly other rules. This can take more or less than one class period, depending on how much you want them to develop their version of the game.
• Play and improve their game - In this step students test the game their group made and then at least one game created by another group. You could also give them time to improve their game based on feedback. This process can be a class period or more, depending how much you want to focus on game design.
• Reflection - For the last part of the activity, students will reflect on what they learned about your course content and about game design. This reflection "seals the deal" for the learning, making this possibly the most important of step of the project.

_________________

The importance of playtesting and revision - the iterative process in game design

This testing and revision stage of the game design process is essential. It can be fun and rewarding or sometimes very frustrating! It's often the heart of the creation process and it will probably take more time than all other parts combined.

Being so important, students need to see it. With limited class time, though, it is likely you will use it in this activity only provide some exposure to the concepts and a chance to have fun with the designs. Tell students it is important when making any type of game, but remind them to really test and improve their game they'd need to work on it a lot outside of class.

Keeping that in mind, tweak the following outline and resources to fit your needs.

Is everyone ready to proceed?

If a class is working through this design activity, at this point each group of students should have redesigned the simple Roll-n-Flip game. At the very least they should have done the following. (All of this is explained in the second post in this series.)

• Chosen a theme for their game based on the topic studied in class
• Created a title for their game
• Written a short introduction about the game
• Redesigned the 11 cards and changed them on the template found in Part 2 of this series

Optionally, the groups might have designed additional rules and components for their game.

Make the games.

When all the parts above are complete, groups should print and cut out any cards or components they need to play their games. It's best to print the cards on cardstock or at least the thickest paper possible.

Each group also needs at least one die. They need tokens for a pawn and chips too, but a template in Part 2 provided components they could cut from paper if those tokens were not available. 

If the groups added rules for additional cards or components, all of those pieces need to be printed and cut out or gathered as well.

Depending on how much time you want the class to devote to this playtesting experience, groups could make two or more copies of their game so multiple groups could play them at once.

Groups test their own games

Game designers often play their own games first, just to see if the creations even work at all. At this stage, each group should play their game at least once.

After playing, students should discuss these questions:

• Did the game work as we intended?
• Did we find anything (good or bad) that we didn't expect?
• How much do we think other groups will enjoy our game?
• What changes could we make to improve the game?

Depending on how much time you have for this design exploration, students could rework their cards. Simple changes might be handwritten right on the cards. Significant changes might require students to actually alter the cards in the original Google Drawings they made in Part 2 of this activity.Of course, that would require them to print and cut out more components.

If time doesn't allow a students to make all the changes they want to, remind them that they can improve the game as much as they want on their own.

Groups test a game designed by another group

For this part of the activity, each group will play at least one other group's game. Ideally this will be "blind playtesting", meaning the groups will play the games without additional assistance from the game designers.

The game components should already be created by now. Game introductions and possibly new rules need to be printed (or shared through Google Drive) so groups have everything they need to learn and play the games.

Along with these materials, give each group a copy of this Game Playtesting Sheet. It provides questions for before and after playing the game. 

Additional considerations

• Give the groups time in class to read and discuss the Game Playtesting Sheets that test groups filled out for their game.
• Groups could test games from more than one group if possible.
• Students could take their games home and have other people play them to get more opinions.
• Have a class discussion (possibly virtually) at the end of this stage so you and the students can look for patterns on what worked best in the games.
• It would be ideal to get test groups from a class that did not go through the design process themselves. In other words, they would likely be unfamiliar even with Roll-n-Flip, so the whole experience would be new to them. This requires the designers to put a lot more work into their rules.

In the next post (and final stage of the activity) students will reflect on their game designs and the design process.

Classroom Game Design Exploration - Part 2

Recent Update:  There's now a link at the end of the post to some sample student games and tips I learned from playing with them.

This is the second part of a series for a classroom game design project that can be used in many classes and subjects. The whole project is based on a very simple game I created. Students will modify that game so it's about the topic they are studying in class.

Here's the flow of the overall project. Each of these stages has its own post, which you can access by clicking the link.

• Learn and play Roll-n-Flip - Students need to learn to play the basic game of Roll-n-Flip first. It should take one class period or less to learn the game and to play it a couple times. 
• Redesign Roll-n-Flip - Next, students will modify the game by adding a theme (based on your lesson) and possibly other rules. This can take more or less than one class period, depending on how much you want them to develop their version of the game.
• Play and improve their game - In this step students test the game their group made and then at least one game created by another group. You could also give them time to improve their game based on feedback. This process can be a class period or more, depending how much you want to focus on game design.
• Reflection - For the last part of the activity, students will reflect on what they learned about your course content and about game design. This reflection "seals the deal" for the learning, making this possibly the most important of step of the project.

__________

Photo by Mark Strozler

Considering Theme in Game Design

For students to understand this part of the game design exploration, they need to think about the concept of theme. If working with an entire class, you could lead a discussion using these ideas here. Students could provide other examples from game they are familiar with. 

The basic game of Roll-n-Flip (which you should have played in part 1 of this series) has no theme. It's not about anything other than getting chips.

Many other very popular games do not have a theme. Think of Checkers or many card games like Bridge or Hearts. Players are just playing with the components within the game's rules, hoping to win. We sometimes call these abstract games.

Photo by Jon Ross

But in other games like Monopoly or Risk have a theme. It's like a story, in a way. More or less, players are pretending to be doing something other than playing with cards and plastic. The themes are selling property and fighting battles to take over the world. In games with strong themes, the card text and the artwork all serve to remind players of that theme.

It's also important to notice that the rules also should support the theme. The rules of Monopoly are not exactly like buying and selling property in real life, but there are obvious similarities. For example, when you put some new buildings on a property it increases in value. In Risk, a bigger army has a better chance of taking over a smaller army. We expect the rules to support the theme.

For this stage of the game design project, students will design the cards of Roll-n-Flip so it has a theme.

Examples of Themes for the Roll-n-Flip Game

I have already created two other games based on the Roll-n-Flip game. Those games have themes and they are: 

• The Game of Christmas Cheer
• All Around Mackinac Island

The themes of those games are apparent from their titles, their boxes and the text on all of the cards. As you might guess, the first one is about Christmas. The second is based on a popular tourist spot in my home state of Michigan.

To make sure players remember the theme on every roll of the die, we don't refer to the chips as "chips". In the Christmas game, they are called "cheer" and we call them "fun" in our Mackinac game. 

Likewise, the cards don't have generic names like the ones I used in Roll-n-Flip. Instead, the Christmas game has "Stressed Out" in place of the Mix-Up card. The graphic on that one shows a person who obviously is overwhelmed with the holidays.

In the Mackinac game, I made that card "Tourist Rush", since a busy day on the island can be a hectic experience.

Really good things also are found in the cards' names. One card is "The True Meaning of Christmas", for example, and it can bring in a lot of chips (cheer) for a player. And in my other game, the best card is Fudge. That's because everyone who visits Mackinac Island knows about the popular fudge shops.

__________________________

Adding a Theme to Roll-n-Flip

After discussing themes in games and looking at the examples above, it's time for students to add a theme to Roll-n-Flip. The theme will be based on the lesson topic they've studied in class. 

The special Game Design Planning Sheet linked below will guide them through the process. Here are some things to keep in mind before assigning the planning sheet:

• The students will choose a theme that's related to your topic. The lesson might be about a book they just read, like The Outsiders, or maybe it will be about a historical event like the U.S. Civil War. While they could use those entire topics as the theme, they also could choose a specific part of those topics. For example, they might focus on a climatic scene of the book or a particularly interesting battle of the war.
• The planning sheet will require them to name each card as something from their theme and to rename the chips. 
• The document has a link to the components for Roll-n-Flip in a Google Drawing. If students click it, they will get a copy of that Drawing. They can type their changes onto the cards and print a copy of the game.
• There are optional ideas listed on the second page of the planning sheet for a more advanced re-design of the Roll-n-Flip game. Use them as appropriate for the age of your students and the needs of this project.

Click here to access the Game Design Planning Sheet.

And click here to see my post that includes some samples from games the students made.

Simple Game for the Classroom and Explorations in Game Design

This is the first part of a series for a classroom game design project that can be used in many classes and subjects. The whole project is based on a very simple game I created. Students will modify that game so it's about the topic they are studying in class.

Here's the flow of the overall project. Each of these stages has its own post, which you can access by clicking the link.

• Learn and play Roll-n-Flip - Students need to learn to play the basic game of Roll-n-Flip first. It should take one class period or less to learn the game and to play it a couple times. 
• Redesign Roll-n-Flip - Next, students will modify the game by adding a theme (based on your lesson) and possibly other rules. This can take more or less than one class period, depending on how much you want them to develop their version of the game.
• Play and improve their game - In this step students test the game their group made and then at least one game created by another group. You could also give them time to improve their game based on feedback. This process can be a class period or more, depending how much you want to focus on game design.
• Reflection - For the last part of the activity, students will reflect on what they learned about your course content and about game design. This reflection "seals the deal" for the learning, making this possibly the most important of step of the project.

____________

How to Play Roll-n-Flip

This is a simple game of chance and pressing your luck. Played with these simple rules, it could entertain students in ages 8 - 12. Remember that the goal of the project is to entertain your students, but to redesign this game. Older students would play it so they can fully understand the basic game first. They'll see it can easily be modified to be more enjoyable by older players.

This video (just under three minutes) is probably the best way to see how the game works. 

After watching the video, read the full rules.

In order to play, you will need these components for each set (which works for 2 - 5 players):

• This Google Drawing contains the cards for the game. Ideally you'd print this on card stock, but paper will work if necessary. Cut those 11 cards out.
• 10 chips per player - These can be poker chips, bingo chips, plastic coins or any small tokens.
• 1 Six-sided die
• 1 Pawn - This can be any small piece as long as players won't confuse it with their chips.

If you can't find chips and a pawn, this Google Drawing has some squares you can cut out for these purposes. (Ignore the additional cards on that template for now.)

Coming soon: Tips for redesigning the game for use in many subjects