UPDATES (did a play test!!)

 Updates, updates, updates

hard to try and keep up with this blog but I want to document all of my recent things that have been happening. 

1st: I have a fully functioning prototype! Pic below

I kept tactile elements from the game of life as a way to see if this would keep kids engaged and they did like them so I think this is something I will want to replicate in my own board game. I went with a candy land strategy where there is color association between the spaces and the cards they have to draw and it worked really well! There are also game chips that represent the "danger meter," which I think was the most successful part of the game. I presented this to two 3rd grade classes for a play test and it went amazing!!! Here are my notes below

Ms. Cornish class:

• kids aren't reading the full information on the cards- not reading the informational tid bits at the bottom (too much info on the card?)
• the arrows on the hills were treated as single spaces
• they got excited when a card was good or bad
• associating the colors with good and bad- ex. they thought the orange and red cards are bad (even though there are both within that category)
• they got very into it and engaged
• only cared about what the danger meter said and not about what was happening or why
• too many kids so they needed to scoot back a bunch to be able to see the game
• when they read about the tid bits there was a discussion about it
• very easy for the danger mete to be empty all the time 
• they never looked up any of the words in the booklet
• were distracted easily
• someone said "do you mean if we do all the things on these cards we can help stop climate change?"
  
• depleting- didn't know this word
• some kids better readers than others
• "I walk to school and back everyday!"
• hard for them to draw black cards so those were very exciting
• starting knowing which was good or bad by just reading what the situation was
• got red cards A LOT
• kids came up to me saying they thought it was really fun
• some kids were correcting the cards- very knowledgeable
• 30 might be too high of a number to determine

Ms. Hane class:

• much tamer than Ms. Cornish class
• asked lots of questions
• read the cards quietly and also not all of the info
• they were reading the bottom portion first and not all of it
• sometimes tried to read the cards upside down
• also losing interest early on

Improvements from Ms. Hane's class:

• chips shouldn't fall over
• make clear to the player that the road is one space
• make it competitive against each other
• more more buckets for chips
• they want teams against each other
• make more cards and something to hold the cards
• tell other people about it
• add higher numbers to meter
• make a tube as wide as the chips- each mark on the tube is about the height of a chip to make it look like an actual meter growing

SUPER helpful visit! next steps are to implement choice and possibly an element of experiential/narrative play (a suggestion from Ashley Moon guest critique)