Last Saturday, youth participants at the Science Game Design Workshop completed and shared out their game prototypes: “Oil Spill!” and “Trash Island.”
The youth had a great time iterating on their game designs, testing them out with other teens, and presenting their (nearly) finished products to aquarium biologist Pam and game designers Chris and Jeff from Stanford.
"Oil Spill” is a frantic, noisy, cooperative game, where four players attempt to respond to an oil spill using a variety of methods. Will you beat the clock and stem the environmental damage? Though game play, you learn about the different tactics employed to respond to oil spills, from animal rescue to chemical, physical and microorganism spill strategies.
“Trash Island” is a turn-based, competitive game, where the players remove animals and nets from a “trash island” in the ocean in order to complete sets of cards for different point values. Through game play you learn what animals get caught in fishing nets and what kinds of nets are being discarded in the ocean.
Both of the games are very creative and fun and cleverly integrate science content. Not an easy balance to achieve, particularly in the very short time frame that the teens had to work on their games (two Saturdays.)