Bug Water Glen (2006)
Bug Water Glen was an educational game I made as a thesis project for 2nd grade science class to be used in a public school.
My Role
I was the developer, artist and designer for this project. I reached out to second grade science teachers to ask what subject matter would be most useful for me to create an educational game for. They told me that while there were a lot of games available for them for reading and math, there were almost no games available for science or history. Looking at the standards for 2nd grade science, we decided to make a game about the food chain. In the game players play a skunk and explore the world around them while looking for food. But wander too far and you might be eaten!
Lessons Learned
Age Matters
While I designed the game for 2nd grade, we also had 1st graders play it too. Since I used a lot of text for the game instructions the difference between the grades was stark: 1st graders couldn't read very well which greatly impacted their ability to play. At the time, this unexpected outcome stuck with me.
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Single Player Game with lots of Group Action
Even though the game was single player, I was amazed at how often the students looked at each other's screens and talked about what where they were and what they were doing. Since the game was based on exploration, this made the students more engaged, not only with the material but with their neighbors' progress.
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