Part-Baked Games: A parent's guide to computing at home
This week’s workshop in our computing at home teaching series is Part-Baked Games, a workshop that will introduce your little gamer to the concept of game mechanics.
Game mechanics are the rules that govern how a game is played and more importantly won or lost!
Part 1 of this workshop is perfect for ages 5-14 years. Part 2 of the workshop is suitable for 8-14 years.
Find all the resources and worksheets here!
Part 1 of the workshop will introduce some common mechanics as identified by BAFTA in their Young Game Designer game idea cards.
- To help your child get a better understanding of how these rules work, we will play some party games!
- Parents, you might like to join in with some of the games to help your child grasp these new concepts.
- Once your child understands the concept of game rules, we will examine their favourite computer game to see what mechanics that uses.
Part 2 of the workshop will teach your child how to take some of the mechanics they have learnt about in part 1, and build them into a computer game using Construct 3.
- Construct 3 is a browser-based game engine that is an excellent tool for introducing people to how games are developed. It is also a nice bridge between simpler visual programming languages like Scratch and more complex game engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine.
- We have designed this part of the workshop to use a part-baked game.
- A part-baked game means that the file you’re creating your game in, includes all the assets needed to make the game. Assets are all the pictures, sound effects and music that will be used in the game. Everything has already been laid out so the learner creating the game can focus on finishing building the game.
- If your child enjoys making our game ‘Run the Gauntlet’ in this workshop, they might like to use our recipe cards to create four more games. These recipe cards contain all the information needed to create each game.
I hope your little learners enjoy Part-Baked Games, please do get in touch with me at estelle@ukie.org.uk if you have any comments or feedback on the workshop.
