Mini Game Jam - and the winners are!!!

On June 19^th 52 children from Royston and Carntyne Primary (mainly primary 7’s but a few primary 6’s) attended the University of the West of Scotland to participate in the mini game Jam. The day started at 10am with the children being put into their teams for the day and meant working with children from the other school – I would have been more popular saying they had to work with aliens for the day!! However that aside the teams worked well and given most are headed to the same secondary school a great transition exercise too in that respect. 

 

Getting Started with game ideas

 During the day the children came up with lots of great ideas from quizzes to football games to maze games.

 Game designs from paper to screen

 

I was lucky enough to have Dr Daniel Livingstone as a volunteer for the day and he kindly stepped in to also give the children a talk about the games industry in Scotland and also where graduates go once they leave UWS. A very informative talk for the children and hopefully gave them all something to think about.  

Dr Daniel Livingstone

Captivated audience

 

By the time 3pm came most of the groups had managed to have a game (some more complete than others) and some even had time to do some play testing of their games to ensure things were working. While children enjoyed a snack the games were judged and the winning game was picked based on it’s originality.

The Winning team and their game Nector Collector – a game where you are the bee and have to go around collecting the nector (coloured circles while avoiding the black blocks and also the timer.

 

The game can be played online at http://scratch.mit.edu/users/mini-game-jam/ along with some of the other games created on the day. 

 

I would like to thank the following people without whom the event would not have been possible:

 

Prof Thomas Connolly – for letting me go ahead with my idea in the first place

Dr Daniel Livingstone – for being a fantastic help on the day and even stepping in to give a talk too.

Dr Thomas Hainey, Dr Jon Sykes, David Moffat and Maxine Dodds for coming along and helping out

School of Computing UWS, Computing at School, Computing at School Scotland and Science connects for all their help with sponsorship of the event and prizes too.