Learning how to design your own game is fun! My children attended a workshop on Bloxels. Coding seems to be all the rage these days, but my children were not that keen. They saw a poster outside a science enrichment centre, and told me they wanted to go for game design. I had no expectations, but after hearing them and seeing their games, I was quite impressed.
They used Bloxels to develop their games.
Gar’s game looks pretty cool. I downloaded the app on my iPhone and played it after getting the coordinates from his teacher. There are a few levels and you have to jump and shoot the villains. His games look just like normal 2D games. It was quite fun actually.
El’s game looks more clinical. He told me he set it in the future.
After their workshop, they told me the instructor had entered their games into an upcoming Bloxel competition. I have no idea how they will do.
They kept asking for a Bloxels game board, and said it would be available in Toys”R”us. We went to two stores but couldn’t find the game. Finally I googled it and we found it at a place in an industrial park. They actually have an online store.
There was one hour to closing, so we drove there and discovered that the place was another enrichment centre which was not that accessible. One workshop was going on at that time. We picked up the box and the person invited us to a free workshop the next day. After a short chat, it turned out that the person conducting the free workshop was the boys’ instructor at the other place.
The box turned out to have many small blocks for the creators to design their characters and background on a gameboard. You have to do up an image first to sync the board to your phone/tablet. After that you can design.
This is my design!
The boys taught me how to animate my character, such as making it blink, and making it walk. We can change the colours to get the shades we want. Game design is not my cup of tea, so I did not continue, but it looks fun.
It is always better to be producers instead of consumers, and I must admit I have been busy consuming products such as books and dramas instead of producing blog entries!
I just hope the boys don’t get tired of this and waste the money spent on this.
