Making Educational Games : Alphabet Tiles Game, Part I
This post is about the design of the Alphabet Tiles game, not the graphics for the game, but the description of it. This is what Game Designers do, they create the definition of the game. A good step in game design is to start with a GDD or Game Design Document. The game design document is inside the docs folder in the repository for this game, and it is the first step.
Github Link: https://github.com/nycynik/AlphabetTiles
The document outlines the tiles educational game. This game is simply reinforcing the individual alphabet letters in both upper and lower case letters. It also includes a schedule of what should be done and when. Since this is a solo project, the schedule is pretty simple. My goal is to create the art, find sounds online, and make the game in Unity.
Gameplay
The game will consist of the players listening to letter sounds, and then choosing the correct letter out of the 4 shown. Every letter that they get right, or wrong, will go away. Correct letters form a word, and the word is spoken once all the letters are correct. I hope the game will help players learn the letters, both upper and lower case, and the sounds of the letters. I may experiment using all 44 sounds, as opposed to just the letter sounds.
Theme
I think the game will have a children’s blocks theme. I made a mood board for the game, you can see it here (https://pin.it/wakwk52vtvnyt2). The idea of the board is to save ideas that you might have about the game or any of its components.
Development
The game will be written using Unity so that it will work across platforms and allow for easy animations. I thought about doing the game in HTML/JavaScript maybe with React Native but decided I would rather spend some more time in Unity for this one.
Conclusion
This is the start of a series of posts on the game, over the next week or so I hope to post again with the results of the first few days of development. My next milestone is to have the repository set up and the basic framework and scenes of the game started. Some basic graphics will also have to be made or found to get started.
