Girlstart’s After School girls at Taylor Middle School have had the opportunity to work as game designers and developers all semester. They started the semester by establishing the basic components that every game has- a setting, goal, challenge, agents and rules. Given a bag of random supplies, each group created their own game using the components they had discussed and writing down their rules. They took turns playing every group’s game and labeling each component. The girls also talked about the importance of making very specific rules to have direct movements, rewards, and consequences for the players.
As the semester moved on, the girls at Taylor Middle School moved their gaming knowledge to the computers to create their own versions of Frogger. Using AgentSheets, they designed every agent that would be in their game. Then, they developed their setting and determined the difficulty for each level. Finally, the girls programmed how the agents in their game moved using conditional if-then statements. For example, if they pressed the → key, then their agent should move to the right. When they finish, they will upload their games to the internet and be able to play them at home!
