In this 10-week unit, students in Years 7 to 9 will learn the fundamentals of game design and development to create an entry for the Australian STEM Video Game Challenge (STEM VGC). Through a series of lessons and activities, students will work across the curriculum developing their critical thinking, problem-solving, and digital literacy skills. The unit will culminate in the creation and submission of a fully developed video game prototype aligned with the competition's Game Design Document (GDD) and scoring rubrics.
STEM VGC rules require students to work in teams of up-to-four. The teacher resources assume that students will work in teams of three or four and will have access to at least one device per team. It is expected that students will work through all the activities to build foundational skills in each of the focus areas. Many of the student resources can be used either on devices or printed for hardcopy use.
We know that many teachers will be learning along with their students, so we have added some tips and extra information to support you along the way. For example, did you know that there is a difference between coding and programming? ‘Coding’ refers to writing the lines of code, whereas ‘programming’ includes not only writing code but also designing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the entire software application.
We have designed this unit to suit a standard 10-week term. All lessons will take approximately 1 hour. This timeframe indicates the minimum amount of time needed to achieve the goal of creating a simple working video game and Game Design Document (GDD). If you have more time, implementing this unit over a semester is ideal. To extend this unit over a semester, we recommend spending additional time in the Design phase.
We have grouped the lessons together into three different phases: Planning, Design and Reflection. The order of the lessons within each phase is structured for optimal time efficiency, but there is flexibility to move lessons around within the phases. For example, we believe it is more time-efficient to complete the game mechanics lesson before working on creating visual and audio assets. This allows teams to implement and test core game mechanics early before spending time creating the game's visual and audio assets. However, if preferred, teams can design visual and audio assets first to have a clearer vision of their game's look and feel, before beginning programming.
Certain lessons need to be completed before others, such as team organization before game mechanics. Therefore, each lesson plan includes a section for prerequisite lessons. Be sure to check for prerequisite lessons before making any changes.