My sons' reflective essays for NaGaDeMon 2019

Yesterday, I wrote about my experience participating in this year's National Game Design Month (NaGaDeMon), but I was not the only one in my household to participate. My 12-year-old and 9-year-old sons each created their own projects as well. Following the Create-Play-Talk structure of NaGaDeMon, I am pleased to share their reflective essays as guest posts here on my blog.

Both of their games can be played online: #1 and #2.

Here is the reflective essay from #1 Son:

For NaGaDeMon, I made a dungeon exploration game with Construct 2. I used Construct because it is the platform I am most familiar with. Construct is a drag-and-drop system, and events are Construct’s way of structuring actions. 

I am glad that I was able to add an avatar creation system where you click on arrows to cycle through different colors of clothes and hair. To do that I had to learn how to use the modulus operator to cycle through a list. Modulus is when you divide a number and take the remainder, so one divided by five has a remainder of one. The cool part about this is that when you divide six by five, the remainder is still one! You can use that to go through a list using only one click. The way I did it before was using a double-click for when you reached the last item in the list so that it wouldn’t loop around and skip a color. 

I am quite happy with the outcome, although the free version of Construct that I am using has a 100-event limit. Originally, I had the player unlock a new weapon with each level, which worked well. The biggest problem I had was getting all of the enemies and bosses in, because the free version has no way to group all of the enemies into one class, so I had to make a different event for each weapon and enemy. Since that took me way over 100 events, I had to take that feature out and replace it with one weapon that got more powerful with each dungeon. I still wasn’t able to add everything that I wanted, but I was able to get all the different enemies in.

Here is the reflective essay from #2 Son:

I have always liked programming. My first programming system was Kodu. I made this in Construct 2 because in Construct 2 I can draw my own sprites. 

I was inspired by my brother’s game about a wizard exploring dungeons. To make it I had to learn how to make more than one layout. I feel like I spent more time than necessary drawing, but with all the left over time I think it was worth it. 

I think I am happy with how it went. I accomplished what I wanted, but what I wanted could have been put in a better game

It was fun to have these guys participate in the fun of NaGaDeMon. I gave them a little coaching in how to write a reflective essay, showing them one of my favorite forms that I use with my college students: What went well? What did you learn? What would you do differently? What still puzzles you? I offered to let them read my reflection as well, which #2 Son did after writing a rough draft of his own. I sat individually with each of them to give them feedback on their handwritten drafts, and  we reviewed them again after they typed them up. Changes were made both times, and I think the results are quite strong. With #1 Son, I encouraged him to expand why the modulus was important to him and how the 100-event technical limitation affected his process. With #2 Son, I encouraged him to expand on why he chose Construct and how to articulate a bit better what "I think I am happy with it" means.

Thanks for reading! I'll be happy to relay any comments you have to the boys, whether they are about the games or the reflections.