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STORY BASED
BOARD GAME
LEARN CODING

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This project was undertaken at HKU, Utrecht as an individual project. The expectations were to deliver a board game that has undergone enough playtests and multiple iterations. 

The selected theme was to make coding fun for children of age 8+ year old. This project is made taking into consideration a student living in India. 

The final product is a Narrative based board game as it supports a single-player mode as well as promotes imagination.

Keywords: Learning, Coding, Game Design, Level Design

 

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CONTEXT

The selected brief was to make an educational board game that will not only introduce an academic topic well but also become part of the main game-play.

This project was undertaken at HKU, Utrecht as an individual endeavor.

Multiple Playtests was done to fix the gameplay.

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PROCESS

Research

Prototype

Playtest

Product

  • User Research

  • Requirements based game design market research 
     

  • Core Game finalization

  • Level Designing

  • Story writing
     

  • Playtest done for multiplayer and single player
     

  • Final art and narrative design

  • Book design
     

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RESEARCH

  • Game-based learning will be effective for children who can understand instructions and process them to take logical steps.

  • Piaget (1953) famously argued that children develop intelligence by naturally progressing through a series of large bio-psycho shifts that alter a wide range of the child’s mental models. Children ranged from 5 to 8 years of age, move from relying on physical symbols and representation to being able of taking others’ perspectives, use logic-based causal reasoning, and rely less directly on physical representations of ideas

  • Research in early childhood settings has shown the benefits of introducing technology and engineering early for improving children’s sequencing ability, design learning, executive functioning, mathematic and linguistic development, and logical reasoning. Find the Research here

Insights from Children's Development Pyschology

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Target Student

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  • According to the National Employability Report (NER) 2019 by Aspiring Minds, only 4.6 percent of Indian engineering job applicants possess the ability to write functionally correct code.
    To instill scientific temper among children at an early age, the Government of India, under the National Education Policy (NEP), has recommended coding as a subject from class 6 onwards. Domain experts, however, have raised concerns over ‘burdening’ young students with a complex subject and pointed to a lack of proper curriculum and teacher training in the domain. They also fear that the move will further widen the digital divide between rural and urban India.

  • A frugal and easily repeatable solution in terms of material and content will be preferred.

  • Computational thinking is a creative way of thinking that empowers children to be systematic problem-solvers, enabling them to identify problems and then brainstorm and generate step-by-step solutions that can be communicated and followed by computers or humans.

  • Computational literacy is the ability to use Computational thinking skills to create real-world artifacts and express themselves while making sense of the world.

  • In research, Bers writes that the public discourse relies too heavily upon a problem-solving metaphor when designing coding tools for children. She suggests a metaphor of expression is more appropriate for fostering creative learning.

 

For the age group of 5-7-year-old children, the research identified the following two key indicators of programming knowledge in children: 


1) The ability to match a programming command with its outcome or action

2) The ability to construct a program that uses the correct commands in the correct order.

Selection of the Subject Area: Programming skills

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Pain Points

  1. Reading text is boring

  2. Self-learning is difficult and tiresome

  3. Don't know the application of coding principles

  4. Should be fun and interesting

  5. Lack of infrastructure

  6. Lack of exposure to computer-related topics

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Requirements

  1. The game should be an introduction to the programming concepts

  2. The game that should increase computational literacy

  3. A game that should support a single-player mode

  4. Frugal material (paper and book based)

  5. Content should be easy to grasp

 

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PRODUCT

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Use Movement cards to move the pawns

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Collect the brackets and complete the code

Draw an IF-else card to get a power-up

You and your friends got stuck inside a computer, but there is only one way out! Play and code your way out!

  • Single Player Mode: To enable self learning a single player mode is added. This is possible because of the narrative attached to it.

  • Level Progression is attached to the story progression.

  • Gameplay will improve:

    • The ability to match a programming command with its outcome or action

    • The ability to construct a program that uses the correct commands in the correct order.

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  • Knowledge Boosters: All the concepts covered in the journey of the player will be present in a condensed manner after each level.

  • The story itself will take the players through various parts of the computer as well introduce them to simple concepts for eg. input/output devices

  • Elements of the game are based on how a code is written. The explanations and definitions are covered in this section For eg.

    • Curly Brackets​ and bugs

    • Decision Blocks: If-else cards

    • Statement Blocks: Movement cards

Thank You

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