Last Wednesday I had my class design a game. This was the exercise in which they were given a few constraints for the game:

1) The game had to be for two players.

2) The game board had to be an 8.5" x 11" piece of paper.

3) The game had to be completable within 5 minutes.

The students were then handed two random game tokens, a die, and colored markers and given 10 minutes to design a game.

On Wednesday, November 12 we had our first release party. Students presented their games to the class, discussed some of the design decisions, and talked about issues they faced in creating their first game and how they overcame their obstacles. Afterward, students rotated through their classmates' games, playing them and providing feedback.

One of our Assistant Principals attended the party. Overall we had an impressive array of games, everything from some maze games to pong-style games, to track/race games.

I am piloting the game programming curriculum using Greenfoot with five students who are in their second semester of computer science. I am also using parts of the curriculum with 20 first semester computer science students but using Scratch as the programming platform. All students are in the computer lab at the same time.

The first semester students are in the process of creating their first games. What is exciting to see is how the students are trying to follow the tenets of humane games. Only one game is a shooter and that is shooting at a bouncing target.