Empowering engagement with Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Maths, students learn vital skills for the future through designing, developing and testing an original 2D video game.
The Aotearoa STEAM Video Game Challenge is powered by Gamefroot and Digital Natives Academy in partnership with Get into Games team.
2022 Theme
The 2022 STEAM Video Game challenge is tūhura. Your challenge is to build a game that brings to light a story from your local area that you think people who live outside of your area might not know about.
MEaNING
tūhura 1. (verb) (-hia,-ina,-tia) to discover, disclose, bring to light, unearth, open up, explore, investigate.
How it Works
1. Form a Team
The challenge is intended to be a team activity, and students may enter the competition working in teams of between 1-4 members.
2. Register
The challenge is free to enter and runs from June 7th until Friday 28th October. Winning teams will be announced early December. Click here to register.
Work through the workbook to create game design document Open Google Slides and make a copy of our Game Design Document
4. Make your game!
Go to Gamefroot your browser to and start creating. If this is your first time making a real game we recommend the Platformer 101 tutorial in the tutorials section of Gamefroot.
Criteria
Games must follow the current theme (tūhura).
Games can be in any language.
Games that have aspects that may be offensive to others will not be considered. This is up to the judge’s discretion.
All submissions must include an accompanying Game Design Document.
Gamefroot [https://make.gamefroot.com] must be used for the digital creation of the game.
This is for school-aged ākonga, kaiko support is encouraged.
Entries are welcomed from individual/groups/whole class.
Each game must tell an Aotearoa centric story (this could be about you).
Games must be fully playable.
Games must have a start screen.
Games must have a game-over screen.
Games must incorporate an individual or team mihi (this could be in the credits section/screen of your game)
Games must have 3 or more core game parts including:
Player
Setting
Objective
There will be bonus points for games that include additional game parts (link to cards).
All images, sounds, names, and icons must be reliable and ethically sourced.
Why try to develop a game?
The process of developing a game emphasises a project-oriented approach to iterative design, collaboration and both self-directed and peer-directed learning opportunities, and is intended to be an exercise in enquiry-based learning and problem-solving - Australian Council for Educational Research
For Students
The 2022 STEAM Video Game challenge provides you the opportunity to learn to think like a game designer and create a digital game. By entering a game in the challenge you will get to go through a real-world game design and development process, and start your journey towards a career in the games industry.
For Educators
Games Based Learning offers you a powerful and engaging way to engage with your students. The challenge empowers your students to demonstrate their knowledge using a technology that they already love and provides them with an educational experience that matches their other worldly interests in a constructive way.
For Parents
Challenging your kids to design and develop a video games provides them with an opportunity to learn important STEAM and 21st Century skills, it puts them on a real career path (employment in the games industry), and it makes their learning experience fun, collaborative, and relatable.
