Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 11 seconds
Thanks to Terry Elliot’s suggestion and several colleagues’ helpful comments on my student blogs (Maha A., Kevin, Sherif and Terry again) yesterday I had a session with my students where we played prototypes of their games and I gave feedback. They also were able to work out little things like small mechanics of the game that could improve and pacing and things like that.
Monday we have a showcase/exhibit at the library foyer from 1-3pm for anyone passing through to come and play.
So I am excited about each game for a different reason. Order here is in order I played the games (tho i could be confusing that completely)
The first is a game called “our university” (they named it in Arabic جامعتنا) and it’s a board game where the players learn to negotiate how to solve on-campus problems in creative ways. It embodies the course title ‘creativity and creative problem-solving’ and also provokes interesting discussions to help students think of how to navigate life at AUC. I hope to invite people interested in freshman students come and see it.
The second is a game to raise awareness about hearing and visual disability in a fun way that also promotes communication and teamwork skills. It is a non-competitive game in that a pair play as a team and accomplish missions to gain points in a scavenger hunt inside the library to find things (I guess it also can teach information literacy since it’s in the library). I played as blind person and it was really tricky to play even the prototype version where i just had to draw an apple! (Now slightly worried about deaf person who gets music in their ears. That could get harmful. Hmmmm maybe earbuds would be better?
The third game is survival. Players go through a board game and find themselves in places where there is a situation to survive from and a set of tools to use creatively to get out. You can get tools in different ways (including negotiation and guessing a tool from riddles). This mainly teaches creative thinking and problem solving.
The fourth game is named “stages“. The box made for the game looks creative and it has 4 types of questions all meant to help players think of social situations with children, teens, elderly, and dealing with strangers. The game reminds me of baladna in the sense that the questions are diverse and ask for very different skillsets to answer.
So.. I am excited about Monday! Will email this blogpost to people who might want to walk in! I need to remember to take photos, too!