You have been introduced to Game Maker. You have looked at online educational games and games in general. Now it is time to see if you can turn your teacher’s lecture, your study notes, the video you had to watch, or the chapter you had to read—into a game.
The first thing you are going to have to do is to make a plan. There are several very good sites on the internet with ideas for planning.
Once you have a plan, you might want to research to find sounds and sprites. Oh, yes, and you might need instructions to make Game Maker do what you want it to do. Check out these sites. They have tutorials, examples, resources, and often explanations.
My first “educational” game was taken from Mark Overmar’s Maze Game, a tutorial on the Game Maker website. Anyone who sees my game can tell that all that I did was change the background, walls, sprites (fun to make—I did the ones on this site), and titles. Still I had to do a lot of thinking about what I wanted to teach. At first I thought I would have “Science Mash” or “Beri-Bow” with various levels leading through various concepts such as Beriberi, making artificial diamonds, subatomic particles, black holes, gravity, sound waves, phases of matter, elements, and finish with why we see rainbows. While, I never even got close—I did review subatomic particles and while thinking about hadrons—which are combos and fermions which make up our universe and came away with a much greater understanding of them.
The easiest way to make your first game is to do the same thing. Just open a Game Maker game and think how you would make it educational. That way half the work is done. Whenever you use someone else’s game make sure that they have given permission to do so and then give them credit. They did most of the work!
Now that you have everything—make that game!
The original two maze levels by Mark Overmars, that I modified in Level One.
Instructions and Points
Points 300 Decide on concepts to be taught. 1000 Make a plan. Write down the beginning and end. Draw some pictures—make a storyboard. 2000 Make an educational game using Game Maker covering seven related concepts. 700 Post to blog site, http://gamedu.blogspot.com/: What is the most difficult part of making an educational game? What is the ideal size group for making a game? Should the class work together on one game? Why or why not? 200 Lose points every day that goes past two weeks of initial assignment. 1000 Bonus--Complete everything in one week—thoroughly and neatly! 500 Bonus--Complete everything in two weeks—thoroughly and neatly! 500 Bonus—For every well-made level after two. ______ Total Points—4000 needed to go to Level 4
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