My fondest memories as a kid had to do with three things: Play, play and more play! Learning games have been around for many years but, now we have the capability of creating games with elearning authoring software such as Articulate Storyline. This post is about the development of a game sample named Cowboy Bomber, an eLearning sample I developed as a submission for the E-Learning Heroes (ELH) blog’s latest “E-Learning Challenge“.
The Story
Every effective and engaging game has a story. Stories have the power to engage players in emotion-driven quests to resolve whichever conflict is presented to them. In this case, the story is about our villain Cowboy Bomber who ambushes a couple while they were enjoying a romantic stroll underneath the desert moonlight. Cowboy Bomber kidnaps Mary and takes her hostage at the town’s saloon. Her boyfriend Jay, a good honest cowboy, has to save Mary by preventing Cowboy Bomber from exploding dynamite bombs.
The Play
In this game the player is not asked to simply stop the bombs by moving a joystick or pressing keys on a keyboard. The player watches a dynamite bomb drop slowly and before impact, the player must solve a math equation or alphabet drag and drop interaction. If the answer is right, the bomb is defused, goes “Poof!” and the player moves on to the next challenge. Otherwise, the bomb drops all the way and goes “KABOOM!” and the game is over.
The Game Development
I developed this game in Articulate Storyline version one or SL1. That means that the animation of characters was achieved by using multiple layers creating the illusion of animation at 24 frames per second approximately. I will be reviewing Articulate SL2 (which came out a few months ago) and creating a similar game which would be greatly improved based on the inclusion of motion-paths animations in this latest version of the software. For now, you can click on the image below to play the game as it was submitted.
