Tourney App
Introduction
The final project in EDTECH534 Mobile App Design for Teaching and Learning is to create a "grand finale" app using MIT's App Inventor. I chose to create a tournament app for use in a game analysis unit of a Video Game Design course. The intended use is for students to compete in each of the 4 mini games while exploring different types of user controls. Following the tournament, each of the games are discussed in terms of player control (they each use a different style).
The app itself is composed of 3 apps created with tutorials over the duration of the semester. Each of these three apps (Space Bouncer, Tap-a-Mole, and Cheasy Chase) have been heavily customized from the original tutorials. The final game, Cookie Crunch, I created from scratch and is the most robust.
The purpose of this site is to outline all aspects of this app's development. You can view a brief description of each mini-game as well as the AppInventor Component and Block views.
Kid Tested
Thanksgiving provided me an opportunity to test my game outside my original educational purpose... just for fun! I handed my 10yr old nephew and 9yr old niece my device with no high scores set and no verbal instructions. This meant that they got all instructions, which I spied them actually reading, and figured it all out by themselves. That was really cool to see. I then walked away to do whatever else. About 20 minutes later I come back to both of them still enthralled in the app and they KILLED in Cookie Crunch (see the screenshot above, 46 is REALLY good). I asked them about the other apps and they mentioned how the Tap-A-Mole game was too hard, they kept missing and losing score. They said they like the Cookie Crunch game the best and that's what they played. That warmed my heart. Maybe I'll package that game in a separate app too?