Paper Prototyping

Game Idea

I am designing my game for children with no experience with Spanish.  The game will teach Spanish vocabulary and phrases.  In my game a family travels to a city in Mexico, for vacation.  The kid in the game spends the day walking around the city buying souvenirs and seeing the sites.  The player has to learn Spanish vocabulary to make their way through the city.  They earn points for buying things and site seeing to motivate them to explore and learn more vocabulary.  A game is a better way of learning than a quiz because, if it's done right, you don't realize you're learning anything because you are having fun.

Mini Game

I've already had two semesters of Flash.  The mini game wasn't hard to do.  For a beginner, though, the instructions could be a little vague.  They didn't explain where to place each piece of code very well.  It was a fun little review exercise.  The hardest part, for me, was getting the wolf to let go of the rabbit after they touched.  He's a really hungry wolf. :)

Game topic

The genre I chose is strategy games.  My game will focus on learning Spanish.  I am thinking about modeling my game after some of the flash games you see on Facebook, like Farmville. 

Playing to learn assignment

I reviewed two games for this assignment: Medical Mysteries and Bullseye.  Medical Mysteries was clearly designed by someone with experience.  The game provided a lot of information on disease and how to cure them.  Bullseye was designed by someone with a moderate amount of experience.  The graphics are pretty good.  The game is fun, but it could use some instructions to help with figuring out how to play the game.

Profile Picture

Internet Safety/Privacy

Internet safety is really just common sense.  Don't add personal information on the internet because there are a lot of disturbed people out there.  They could use your information to find where you live or use the information to steal your identity. 

First Day

Today is the first day of class.  We're setting up our blogs and wiki profiles.  The process is a long and slow one.