• The goal of this activity is for the students to start thinking of their games as more than simple racing and shooting environments. Games are often a complex network of interactions, and while a few stories are fairly flat in structure, most have characters that are in opposition to each other, have alliances, progress to a particular goal. Push the students to think of their work as a form of text may help them design more complex worlds and more complex code.

• Divide students into groups

Directions:

Brainstorm some ideas for a game created with Microsoft Kodu.

Complete the following questions in Microsoft Word.

1. Setting (what does the landscape look like?)
2. Mood (whimsical, dark/brooding, does the pace of the game go up and down?)
3. Characters (behaviors, conflicts, friends, alliances?)
   • Main character (protagonist)
   • Opposing character (antagonist)
   • Other characters
4. Objects (do the trees, buildings, rocks, etc. hold a special function?)
5. Plot (how does the story progress?)—the hook/inciting incident, rising action, and climax (which in literary terms consist of exposition, rising action, climax, resolution and conclusion.)
6. Why would someone want to play the game? What will make it unique?

Begin Building your game.

1. How was it different from yours?
2. Whose did you like better?