Bomb Dodge-Game Design

Introduction

The game design module was taken by Prof. Athavankar, during my 3rd Semester. We were working with Agastya Foundation to help improve learning outcomes. The challenge was to create learning oriented games for resource-constrained communities which are primarily fun. Because as Prof. Athavankar says:

If the games aren’t fun no one’s going to play them and by extension, no one’s going to learn anything

I chose the Cartesian Coordinate system to work with. The conceptual understanding required for it was:

• Ordered number pairs as a representation of location in space
• Enoding the numbers
• Decoding the numbers

A study of existing games around the concept revealed that most games would focus on asking the kids to plot a point or replicate a pattern, requiring them to encode and decode in a mechanical manner rather than intuitively developing an understanding of what the numbers really mean.

Some people who took up the same concept went about creating games around boards since it seemed like the ideal way to merge a ‘game’ with a ‘grid’. This posed two challenges in my opinion

• The kids fall into the trap of thinking that the Cartesian system is some abstract concept only used in notebooks and boards ie to say they never realise that this can be taken out of the academic
• The communities that we were developing these games for, had economical constraints, so it was ideal to use as little resources as possible(the games we developed were supposed to become part of Agastya’s collection of games called Majja Box)

Initial Concept

I tried to think around games which have rules, a story and very little required in terms of resources(think traditional Indian games). The first idea that I came across was Dabba Dabba. On refining and thinking through the rules and gameplay we play-tested it with kids.

Iteration 1

The game didn’t work out as it wasn’t fun and didn’t provide enough incentive to play as there was no sense of competition. It also failed on the learning aspect of it since it only taught decoding and not encoding. Prof. Athavankar had solid advice and insight here, he told me that for a kids game to succeed you should allow them to

• compete
• make noise
• let them hurt each other’s chances of success
• break stuff
• become masters at the game
• be able to increase difficulty over time

This made me put my thinking cap again. That’s also when I realised that game design is a more complex field than I had thought. The traditional Design thinking methods just did not work out. I stayed at it and while discussing the rough concepts with a friend was when we both suddenly realised the potential in one of them and got very excited about it. We developed a basic idea of the game and then he left.

Final Concept

The game that I made now looked more complex initially when I put it into explicitly written rules, but explaining the game was simple enough verbally. Also, the game didn’t have a complex gameplay. I am a long time fan of Catan, Scotland Yard and Risk(now Pandemic as well). By contrast, the rules seemed simple enough for my game :P.

Bomb Dodge

The play-test for this game went successfully. The kids were enjoying a lot and didn't think of the encoding-decoding process as a task but rather as a necessity to clearly communicate and work together to defeat the other team.

Evaluation & Reflection

Though there is no proper study done around this particular game only one play-test. As a theoretical evaluation strategy, I checked it against the Learning Spiral.

The Learning Spiral

Imagine: The children start by imagining a fantasy battleground

Create: The kids then create teams and narratives around their strategies

Share: The game doesn't perform well on the sharing front, the only thing shared during the game is the information during game play

Reflect: The teacher can help the kids reflect and make a better strategy if needed

This game will be arguably successful in:

• developing cooperation
• communication skills
• leadership skills
• hand-ear coordination
• strategy and
• yes, also teaching them Cartesian coordinates

This game will set the kids free and let them explore the concept of Coordinates outside a learning setting.

I feel my exposure to learning strategies in children and creative methods of play was very instrumental in informing my choices during the game development.

I took the Learning Creative Learning course created by Mitch Resnick of the MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten Group which talks about constructionist theories of learning and ways of utilizing them in the development of learning tools for children.

Have a look at my other stuff!