Tower of Tense
- Role: Lead game designer
- Platform: Web
- Development tool: gamemaker studio 2
-Development time: 4 months
Tower of Tense is an ELA mini-game that's part of the ELA Village suite of games for 3rd-5th grade English learning. The game let's students practice verb tense through platforming gameplay. Content questions take the form of platforming challenge rooms where incomplete sentences appear on a banner, and different word choices to complete the sentence appear on bug enemies crawling and flying around the room. To select a word, players jump on the enemy with that word written on it to generate a word bubble that floats down to the banner and fills in the sentence. Students then get feedback on their answer, whether right or wrong. When students answer correctly, they move onto the next challenge.
To add some flavor and excitement to the game, we've also included a time travel mechanic, where students select the verb tense to complete the sentence by traveling through a door to go to either the past, present, or future. This means that students must choose the correct tense as well as the correct word to complete sentences.
The game also contains collectible gems that are found throughout the game world. Collecting them increases the player's score and also yields more coins in the ELA Village reward economy.
As Lead Game Designer, I was responsible for developing the core concept for the game, working with the art team to develop the theming for the game, prototyping the gameplay, developing the enemy design, and developing the pacing and gameplay progression.
Play the game in Stride's Learning Hub!
https://learninghub.com/
Seen above is the time period selection lobby.
Seen above is the world of the past. The player is posed with 3 answer choices to complete the sentence.
Seen above is the world of the future (my personal favorite!).
The screenshot above shows a platforming challenge where the player must bounce on the enemy in the middle of the screen to reach the yellow gem (it's important to note that players can still reach gems after they answer a question, so they DO NOT have to answer incorrectly to reach a gem).
Seen above is the world of the present (the present time of the ELA Village).
