Game On!

Over the past month we have had one of our Make Club parents leading sessions on App Inventor to learn about building apps and games. On one of these weeks another parent brought in an old Atari magazine that gave examples of how to make a sprite from hand. It was a great activity to demonstrate the building blocks of coding in games. What is also great about this is that parents were leading these sessions. It has always been the intention to have Make Club as a community driven club where people are learning with and from each other.

We have also been lucky enough to have Matthew Gatland come and talk to us about what it’s like building games for a living and show us a tool called Flickgame. Flickgame is a tool designed by Stephen Lavelle that allows users to make their own games. The cool thing about this game-making tool is that you can be really creative as you get to draw pictures in each frame. I can see this being a great tool to use in writing and as storytelling prompt as it also works like a pick a path adventure.

Matthew talked about an initiative he is involved in called Pop-up Arcade, which showcases games made by New Zealanders. The site also has information about more great game making tools like Twine (also a great one for using to create interactive stories) and Gamefroot.

Building simple games is another way to introduce kids into coding, but it is much more than that. It is an opportunity for kids to express themselves creatively and create different pathways to engage in storytelling and writing.