Last Seen Blogs
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critique blog 5
Game Metadata
The game I decided to critique is imagi, for which information can be found at https://imagilabs.com/. It’s developed by imagiLabs and aims to teach players about coding in Python by using their code to create fun pixel art. The platforms the game can be played on are iOS and Android, and there seems to be a PC version for a classroom if you purchase the education pack for your students.
Educational Goals
I didn’t get very far into the game so I can’t speak much for later levels, but the game seems to teach players basic coding fundamentals (more specifically, in Python), although I only played the levels where they do array indexing. It assumes no prior coding experience nor knowledge, but does assume that the player can read numbers and how a grid works, using this to teach them how to correlate them to row col indexing in a 2D list.
The player could use the knowledge gained from playing the game to generate images on their own using Python, or go create their own coding projects and be able to solve Python coding problems. Since coding fundamentals are (for the most part) the same regardless of language, they could transfer the knowledge to quickly adapting to other coding languages.
Game Elements
The game’s core gameplay loop is to use code to complete a piece of pixel art. To achieve this, the player will set 2D list indexes to a specific color, or they will choose where in the 2D list, represented as a grid, the given array index is. Both the columns and rows are labeled with numbers. Once they complete the piece of pixel art, they can move on to the next level. The difficulty of the level is to increase as they increase. Players can also create their own piece of pixel art based on their own imagination (rather than following game instructions for a pre-defined piece) by coding it themselves and sharing it with the community.
The player can feel a sense of accomplishment when they complete a piece of pixel art, and can be motivated to learn more about CS concepts to create more interesting pieces or animate their pixel art. They can also feel a sense of community by sharing their code with others and commenting on other players’ coded art pieces.
Learning Mechanisms
The game appears to be trying to impact induction and refinement through pre-training and linking. It also uses spatial contiguity by providing a visual representation. Each level builds on the past level– players first are first indicated where on the grid the given 2D list index is, and then are asked to find it themselves, and as levels increase, need to type in the [row][col] themselves based on where the game points to.
This supports the learning goal of learning array indexing through helping the player understand visually how to index into a 2D list, and builds on previously gained knowledge to guide them through the process. Because it first shows them exactly where the index is located before taking it away, it pretty much holds their hand through the process at first, and then asks the player to figure it out themselves, which can solidify their knowledge with less and less hints as they proceed. However, I do think in a way the beginning levels in particular could hinder understanding of the material because while they no longer show the exact location of where they’re indexing into, they still highlight the number on the row/col labels on the top and left side of the grid, which the player could grow dependent on in selecting where the given index is instead of thinking about it themselves.
Overall Critique
I think the game is a fun and cute way to get people more interested in coding and learning basic concepts. Because it revolves around completing pixel art, it emphasizes a more creative approach to learning CS, which I think is nice. I found it rather annoying that I couldn’t skip to a more difficult level, as I would have liked to see how they taught other concepts like loops or conditionals without having to go through several levels of array indexing. This would likely be frustrating for other players who want to use this game as a means to learn how to code and already know a few concepts. I think it’s rather successful as a game, but I think the education aspect of it could use some work. I think they provided too many hints in the earlier array indexing levels; players could be dependent on those hints and not actually learn anything. However, I assume this is for young kids, which may be why they provided all those hints and moves so slowly. Overall, I think this game is a good starting point for learning to code if you are a young kid.
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critique blog 3
Game Metadata
The game I decided to critique is Flexbox Defense, which can be found at http://www.flexboxdefense.com/. It’s developed by Channing Allen and aims to teach players about CSS styling through the use of flexboxes. The platforms the game can be played on are PC, Mac, Linux, the browser.
Educational Goals
The game seems to want the player to learn how to employ flexboxes when styling using CSS, displaying the different kinds of behavior of the flex children based on the lines of code. This includes using the following properties: justify-content, align-items, flex-direction, and align-self. It assumes that the player has basic CSS coding knowledge and knows how the structure of CSS code works, as it doesn’t teach the player things like selectors, values, etc, and instead heads straight into flex boxes.
As CSS styling is an important part of web development, by learning about CSS flex boxes through this game, players can employ these skills to create more responsive websites in combination with HTML and JavaScript.
Game Elements
The game’s core gameplay loop is to use towers with cannons to shoot down enemy waves. To achieve this, the player must properly position the towers, which are inside flex boxes, using CSS styling in order to position them. The towers will then shoot the enemies that are close to them as they pass by the tower. The more enemies that the player can shoot down, the more points they get for each wave; shooting down all the enemies in a wave results in 100 points for that wave. As the player moves to the next waves, the amount of towers increases as well as the difficulty of the CSS styling (there are more properties to consider).
The player can feel a sense of accomplishment and completion when they shoot all the enemies down, and if they don’t, they are encouraged to try again due to the unlimited retries on a wave before moving on to the next one. As the levels also get harder as the player moves on, the player can also feel challenged by the increasing difficulty as they play the game.
Learning Mechanisms
The game appears to be trying to impact induction and refinement through application. Players practice writing code for CSS flex boxes by applying flex box rules to towers, where their location is based on the values of the properties players write down in code. It also makes use of interleaving, as it mixes in different properties of flex boxes at the same time, rather than focusing on only one at a time.
The learning mechanism of induction/refine supports the learning goal of understanding flex box behavior based on inputs through helping the player grow more comfortable with their understanding of how the flex box behaves and they become more skilled at manipulating flex box properties.
Overall Critique
I think the game is likely to succeed as both a game and a learning experience, especially for younger kids who find excitement in completion games of this kind. It turns flex box practice into an interactive activity using a different subject, which I believe takes the boredom out of studying these CSS behaviors. However, I see it less effective for older kids and college students due to the childlike nature of the game– I think they would more likely want to just get straight to understanding where each flex child, or “tower”, would go in each situation and wouldn’t bother much with watching the towers shoot down the enemies, especially since the movement is so slow. In both situations however, I think it does a good job of teaching players how flex boxes behave and gives them the practice necessary to grow more fluent and comfortable with the different types of behaviors and what input is needed when you want a specific behavior. It’s good that it starts off with easier levels (only using justify-content), and slowly adds more flex box properties into the mix as the difficulties get harder, helping players understand and practice different kinds of combinations of inputs they need to get the flex children to act a specific way.
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critique blog 2
Game Metadata
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a Nintendo Switch game by Nintendo that teaches about design and architecture through creating your own village. The link to the game can be found here: https://www.animal-crossing.com/new-horizons/
Educational Goals
It seems to me that Animal Crossing aims to help players learn and cultivate their own self-expression and creativity through building houses, decorating their village, and customizing their in-game character. It also helps players learn about money management, as the player must take out loans to build houses and bridges and pay them back. There are also a lot of different artifacts and animals that exist in the real world, which players are able to collect and learn what they look like (although 3D modeled). It assumes that the player knows how to read and can use a Switch, and has basic knowledge of natural species and how to exchange money for goods.
The creativity that Animal Crossing teaches encourages players to express themselves in real life. It helps them learn more about designing different artifacts, such as housing interiors or clothes, which may transfer to interests in these subjects in real life. Additionally, as players pay off their loan to Tom Nook, they can transfer this knowledge to real-life debt situations, as they may need to take out student loans or such in the future, and will have already had a glimpse of the process through playing Animal Crossing.
Game Elements
Animal Crossing uses the interactions between you and your surroundings, whether it be the villagers, your creditor, or nature, to help you cultivate your self-expression, sense of money management, and learning about new species. The core gameplay loop revolves around building and caring for your village through placing decorations, building houses and infrastructure, and talking to your villagers. Additionally, players can visit other villages (with permission), talk to their villagers, send and receive gifts, purchase and/or craft items,and pay back their debts. They can also dig for artifacts and bells, knock fruit out of trees, and go fishing. Outer loops would be eventually paying back their debt, inviting more villagers to create an overall community, and finishing the collection displays in the museum.
Learning Mechanisms
Animal Crossing builds both memory and understanding of insects and fish as you repeatedly see them when you go out to catch them; due to the graphical aspects of the game, it utilizes spatial congruity by showing you what the insect or fish looks like in addition to highlighted words of the name of the species. When donating these creatures to the museum, you are given an opportunity to learn about more characteristics of the creature you caught from the museum curator if you are interested in doing so. Animal Crossing does well in helping players learn about the physical characteristics of each creature, but not much about their actual behaviors as they only learn about them in the form of an NPC describing them.
It also impacts your understanding of money management skills through use of anchored learning– you must apply these skills to the in-game situation of owing bells to Tom Nook to pay off your loan, which loosely reflects the harsh reality of our real-life capitalistic world. This aspect does a good job of helping you learn about money management; gamifying a debt is much more interesting for someone to practice saving up and making payments on mortgages, rather than reading about it. Although further research would have to be done when paying off a loan in real life, Animal Crossing does a good job in helping players get familiar with and exposing them to the concept of saving up and paying off debt.
The game also encourages creative thinking and understanding how you want to express yourself by allowing for personalization of your island based on your interests. By providing this range of customization, Animal Crossing supports the player in their creative endeavors that is uniquely them.
Overall Critique
I think this game does a pretty good job as both a game and a learning experience. The game is fun and relaxing, and players are given the freedom to express their in-game character and their village however they want (as long as it’s not inappropriate), which I do believe translates to real-life creative expression. Granted, it doesn’t fully reflect real-life situations of debt, but it does a good job in familiarizing players with the concept. The same goes for learning about the different species of insects and fish– although a player is encouraged to look more into the fish/insect they catch if they so desire. However, some players may get bored of Animal Crossing as a game since the same elements occur over and over again– they build their village, invite villagers, create more infrastructure, they go more into debt, and they have to pay it off. Yet at the same time, there isn’t a penalty for taking a break and going back to the game, which may encourage players to hop back in whenever they feel like it. Additionally, players are free to completely renovate their village and build it up again from scratch, exploring the atmosphere of different kinds of decorations and further exercising their creativity.
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critique blog 1
Game Metadata
Duolingo is a mobile application that teaches second language acquisition. It is developed by Duolingo, Inc. and made available on both iOS and Android. You can also access it through a web browser; the link to this game can be found here: https://www.duolingo.com/ .
Educational Goals
The game wants the player to learn a new language of their choice, and exercises their vocabulary, listening, reading, and writing skills in that language. Most of the language options assume that you are an English speaker, though Catalan and Guarani are also available for Spanish speakers, and Mandarin Chinese speakers can learn Cantonese through Duolingo. Additionally, Duolingo has English learning options for 25 different languages (https://duoplanet.com/duolingo-languages-list/).
When it comes to the actual language learning process, Duolingo assumes no prior knowledge when you are first starting out. However, if you do have prior knowledge of the language, you may take a “test” to skip out of several levels to one that is more suited to your learning level. It uses the language you already know (mostly English) and matches English words and phrases to that of the language you are trying to learn.
Game Elements
Duolingo makes use of gamified lessons to teach you a language. It does this by having players complete a series of levels, where you gain experience through completing lessons. The core loop of Duolingo is to complete as many lessons and gain as much experience as you set your goal to. In these lessons, players can choose the corresponding word to a tested vocabulary word, translate sentences into the language they are trying to learn or vice versa, and listen to speech and choose the word they think the game is saying. Duolingo will also at times test your knowledge of words and phrases you previously learned. Players get rewarded if they keep up their learning streak long enough, and can also enter a weekly leaderboard against other players. Players can set a daily goal and track their progress in their language learning journey.
Learning Mechanisms
Duolingo tries to build fluency and memory through testing the player. When testing new words, it also uses spatial contiguity by placing images next to the vocabulary word choices. Duolingo will immediately provide feedback and tell you if you got a question wrong, and will test you with the same question later in the same level. Duolingo also tries to use application to build the player’s fluency by having them write translated phrases by applying newly learned vocabulary words. Duolingo also uses spaced repetition for players to review and get tested on past vocabulary terms and phrases to build their memory and fluency in the language’s vocabulary (https://e-student.org/spaced-repetition/).
However, Duolingo’s learning mechanisms are mainly based on rote memorization and translating given phrases, and won’t help someone much if they actually need to have a meaningful conversation with someone in the language they are learning. When it comes to language learning, learning to translate words can set a good starting point, but won’t help much when using the language in a real-world context where you would need to understand longer and more complex phrases.
Overall Critique
I think language-learning is a fairly complex subject, and Duolingo does a good job on giving someone looking to learn a new language a good foundation to build off of. However, it doesn’t really meet the goal of helping someone become fluent in a language. The amount of levels and the fact that it uses memorization as a tactic to learn can make it quite dull, and as a result, it’s difficult to have incentive to continue language learning through this app. This also plays into how I don’t really feel like it succeeds much as a game despite its gamified elements as I personally feel like it’s not interactive enough for a successful player experience. While games have a loop, it feels like the exact same elements occur over and over again with very little change in difficulty, making it not very interesting and hard to stay motivated.
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