Last spring I taught another iteration of Global Video Games class at HWS. I can say that it was a much better experience for both the students and me.
This time I used Construct as the game-making platform for the students to learn. The company behind it boasts that it is a game-making platform that requires no coding (not with AI though!). And to a certain extent it is true. My students were significantly less frustrated with Construct than with Godot platform that I used two years ago. However, with Construct they still need to understand the logic of programming and to follow the instruction in the correct order. Otherwise, bugs will be everywhere. Thankfully, Construct has a huge amount of resources for troubleshooting and experimenting with their platform, which was a huge help for my students. Another thing about Construct is that it is best for simple games. If you want complex games, then it is a very limited platform as one of my students found out.
Last spring was also the first time that all my students were able to realize their ideas into playable games, which I am quite happy about. One project that I want to highlight in this post is from my independent study student titled American Pharaoh. It is a thoughtful project about Islamophobia, stereotypes about Middle Eastern country, and being a person “in-between” two cultures. The student was inspired by Mike Yi Ren’s Twine/Unity game, Yellow Face, that we played as a class assignment. And I think he executed his ideas quite well in this game. Particularly the subtle changing of the environment mimicking the Yellow Face‘s game mechanic. This is also the student who complained about the limitation of Construct for creating complex games as his original vision was much more complicated than his final prototype.
You can play his prototype game here.
Two honorable mentions are Matching Madness, a card matching game about memorable landmarks/persons at HWS (featuring the voice of yours truly), and The Divide, a game about the unequal relationship between indie and AAA game industries.
