Thank you for starting here.

Haven’t made a game before? We’re here to help

We’ve all had that lovely student who just started right in to the test or project without listening to the instructions. That’s sort of like starting on making a game without designing it first. The 10-15 minutes you spend on design will greatly increase the speed and quality of your educational game. We promise. We’ve been doing this a long time. Some good design aspects are built in, like making it clear through sound, color and text whether an answer is right or wrong but other aspects depend on you, the creator.

As teachers, we’ve often found to helpful to give students worked examples, so we are providing the same for you in terms of sample questions, scripts, images and complete games.

Ask yourself five questions:

  1. What do I want my students to learn?
  2. How will I know they have learned that? What assessment will you do? We have plenty of example questions you can use, or start from those examples and get creative!
  3. What is the story for this game? We have scripts you can use as is or modify.
  4. Where is my artwork? In our no-code version, 7 Gen Blocks EDU, you select from the image collections provided. The low-code version allows you to select from available artwork or add your own.
  5. How can I accommodate learning differences?

1. What do I want my students to learn?

If you’re a teacher, this may be the easiest question for you to answer. Go ahead and feel smug as you read this part addressed at non-educators.

What makes a a good game design?

An educational game LEVEL includes a story, game play, instruction and assessment. A game level usually takes 5-15 minutes to play.

  • Pick ONE standard or specific topic per game level. For example, the Bake-a-palooza game teaches and assesses this fifth-grade standard: “Apply and extend previous understandings of division to divide unit fractions by whole numbers and whole numbers by unit fractions.”
  • Standards taught in each level should be related. If your first level teaches dividing unit fractions by a whole number, your second level should teach dividing a fraction a/b by a unit number and not geometry.
  • Your game narrative (story line) and the standards taught in each level should all address the same grade. A good game won’t have a reading level of ninth-grade and fifth-grade math problems.
  • Cross-curricular games that have some levels that teach math and others that teach English language arts or social studies are perfectly fine, again, with the caveat that all content should target the same grade level and be related. For example, a social studies lesson might teach about the traditional Dakota diet and be followed by math lesson computing how many bowls of stew will be needed for 15 visiting relatives.

Common Core standards can be found here. You can also use specific state or tribal standards.

There are many, many sites online that will calculate readability for you. We like the Flesch-Kincaid scale. You can also calculate that with Word. If you’re a fifth-grade teacher, you probably have a good estimate of what would be appropriate for a fifth-grader. If you aren’t a teacher, you’re probably overestimating and would be advised to check your readability score and grade-level standards.

2. How will I know what they have learned?

The assessment items should address the standard you want to teach – and nothing else. We’re sure you know this but even the best teachers sometimes forget. We have sample problems, by standard, you are welcome to use on the “Assessment Examples” page.

Mistakes to avoid in creating assessments

  • Don’t test English language ability when you mean to test math. It is super easy to change a game from English to any other language, literally as easy as typing. Please see our recommended best practices when designing in a second language.
  • Don’t test reading ability when you mean to test math. You can record voiceovers for instructions be sure that struggling readers understand what they are supposed to do.
  • Give hints where appropriate. Perhaps, in a classroom, you’d tell a student assigned to divide fractions, “Keep the first fraction, change the division sign to multiplication and flip the second fraction.” Then, go ahead and include that hint in your game. It will automatically popup when the student clicks on the “?”.
  • Give feedback beyond whether answer is correct/incorrect, when appropriate. If a student misses questions, you may want to direct them to a block that reteaches the material.

3. What is the game story?

Every game needs a story, and this is where many would-be designers fall down. Your story should introduce the game and give the player some reason to want to answer the questions correctly. Your game can be short, just one level, with an introductory story, instruction, assessment and game block, like search game. Or, you can have multiple levels that you link together. Need some ideas for story lines? Check out our sample game narratives here that you are free to use or modify.

4. Where is my artwork?

7 Gen Blocks Edu comes with four art packages; woman baking, man baking, Library of Congress and Smithsonian photos. Many more art packages are being added post-MVP.

5. How do I accommodate learning differences?

Several steps have already been taken in the design. These include:

  • Visual, text and auditory cues for right or wrong answers,
  • Requiring a physical response to the text showing correct or incorrect response
  • Repeating a shortened version of the assessment instructions at the top of the assessment.
  • Providing the option for giving students hints
  • Providing the option for different learning paths for students who do or do not attain mastery on an assessment.

Additionally, 7 Gen Blocks EDU makes creating games in a second language extremely easy. Simply type in the text for the second language – no more difficult than creating a PDF and far more engaging. Please see our recommended best practices when designing in a second language.

Coming in version 1.0 will be the ability to record voice overs for narrative and instructions and descriptive alt-text added for all gallery images.