Digital Game Design

Get your game on! Digital game design gives students an opportunity to exercise and hone a number of skills that transfer to other content areas and disciplines: research, problem-solving, writing, storyboarding, digital content creation, software coding, etc. This category includes designing original content and the rules of an interactive game. Students may use the software program of their choice in order to demonstrate creativity, originality, organization, and interactivity.

Students should be able to explain to judges what inspired their game idea and how they programmed their game to achieve project goals.

Tools and resources used in this category include but are not limited to:

• Safe and free, Scratch and/or Scratch Jr. developed and supported by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are both excellent resources for aspiring game designers
• Adventure Game Studio
• Android Studio
• GameMaker Studio
• GameSalad Creator
• Hopscotch
• PuzzleScript
• Sploder
• Stencyl
• Tynker
• Unity 3D Game Engine

You may have up to 2 people on a team but teams and individuals will compete against each other within each grade grouping. Regardless of the length of the project, judging time is 15 minutes. Judges may only view a portion of the actual project.

Judges will use the Game Design category rubric as a guideline for exemplary characteristics of projects in this category. Students should use the rubric as a guide for what judges are looking for.