Alphabet Tank Game
The Learning Never Stops
Developed by Alanzo Granville and Isaiah Granville
This is one approach that I found is enjoyable for kids, especially if they like tanks and aircraft like my son, and provide education reinforcement without them even noticing it.
Now my goal here was to help my son learn his ABC's, and start to introduce him to game design, a game development platform, as well as introducing him to his first venture into coding. This was a big introduction to learning ABC's especially for someone who had just started Pre-Kindergarten (Pre-K). Fortunately, my just turning 4 year old son already understands how to play games, and had completed a few. They grow up so fast, don't they. My son and I were both designers, developers, and testers for this game.
This is a kids game, so I will not go too much into the weeds here. I will mention the software we used to develop the application, and show some final videos demonstrating our progress. When it comes to progress on this I am going to keep working on it as long as my son stays interested, and for a four year old interest is everywhere and not long lasting. So my goal was to at least get this to a playable state to allow him to learn and enjoy it. Later if he wants to add more content and dynamic animations we'll add it together, and update the page. The great news is that we got the game to a pretty good state, and my son comes back and plays it! I think he became satisfied when I added in the self gratifying feedback of completing the tasks.
The Game
Here is the concept of the game in a nutshell. My requirements to create a decent kids game, and do keep in mind that there are other things out there that make children games great, but this is my initial opinion in respect to this project. Here is the basic approach below.
Children's game need:
- Make sure that the child can identify where he/she is or what he/she is controlling
- Provide something that they can identify as a goal
- Provide something to direct or instruct them to complete that goal
- Consider a way to identify progression
- Learning involves correct and incorrect feedback so provide a response that relates the two
- Provide a visually, auditory, or both appealing congratulations from completing the task
This game has two game modes. One mode presents the player with a card showing a letter while proceeding to progress through the alphabet sequentially until the end, and another mode that presents two cards with letters which the player has to distinguish between the correct and incorrect letter. Both modes include a selection box in the top right corner of the player's screen and denotes the correct card selection. If the player shoots the correct letter he/she hears a positive sound to support positive reinforcement and receives a Super Star for positive visual feedback; if the player shoots the incorrect letter he/she hears a negative sound to deter the user from selecting the incorrect letter while visually not receiving a star. So that the player is aware of his/her location in space the player is in control of a reticle shown in the image below. Additionally projectile firing, particle effects, sounds of firing, collision, and destruction were integrated into the application.
In summary, the game makes the player interact with an object to get correct or incorrect feedback. Using auditory, visual, and tactile interactions as a way to promote positive behavior and stimulate memory through doing. At the completion of each tasks the player is given a nice visually appealing congratulations with applause to support the self-gratifying success of completing a task, which could possibly make the player want to always have that end result and feeling. In my case, adding the congratulations made my son's day. He also wanted to continue to play compared to times when he did not receive any information indicating that he had completed the task leading to boredom.
This game was created using a combination of different software including Unreal Engine, Microsoft Paint, and GIMP.
Considering how this all turned out I have to give a big thanks to my number one helper and assistant, without you this would have never been possible. Remember this is a work in progress as long as my son stays interested, but I thought it would be a wonderful thing to share demonstrating a parent and child bonding experience with a fun end result. He is learning something useful and he doesn't even know it. It's just all a very very beneficial game that is going to lead to reading.
The Good Stuff
There is no better way to show you all our great progress than using videos. Below I have provided two videos demonstrating our progression through this tank and letter dominated adventure. The first video demonstrates the sequential progression through the alphabet in order with completion gratification, while the second video demonstrates another mode where my son has to select the correct letter card to get stars.
Sequential ABC's with Congratulations and Stars
Youtube Link: https://youtu.be/w-FHCI6_yzA
My Son Vocally Repeating Letters Aloud in the Mode with Two Cards
Youtube Link: https://youtu.be/QxglCTBwN1I
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