Game Designer

Pogo Espresso would like to have a game for their customers. A game which can be playful, collaborative and fun. Can playing a game remind you of your childhood?

Game Designer introduces students to the fundamentals of game design through a real-world challenge — creating a playable game for customers at a local coffee shop. Using either MakeyMakey or Micro:bit, students will design games that are engaging, easy to play, and suited to short waiting times.

Throughout the course, children will explore what makes a game fun and accessible by considering user experience, timing, difficulty levels, and replay value. They will design and prototype their own games, experiment with features such as scoring systems and simple leaderboards, and test their ideas with peers to refine gameplay. Students will also think about the coffeeshop environment and how players will interact with their game while waiting for their orders.

Students will learn key concepts of game logic, sequencing, inputs and outputs, and basic programming through hands-on creation. They will also develop creativity, problem-solving, empathy, and iterative thinking as they design for real users in a real setting.

By the end of the course, students will have developed a functional game designed for a live audience and understand how design decisions impact user experience.