Looking for an engaging way to teach game design to your students or children? Look no further than Space Rocks!
Based on the Atari arcade classic, Asteroids, Space Rocks is a 2D shooter all about blasting away space debris and racking up the highest score you can. It’s the perfect project for complete newcomers to game design or the GameMaker software.
All of the materials you need to create and teach the Space Rocks project are available to download in a single .zip folder at the button below.
Download all materials here
Educator’s Guide
The Educator’s Guide is your one-stop resource for all things Space Rocks. The Guide covers:
- How to download GameMaker
- Troubleshooting and technical support
- How to teach GameMaker to students
- The Space Rocks curriculum and its educational outcomes
- All three Space Rocks lesson plans.
The lesson plans and recommendations featured in this guide can be used verbatim to get your classes up and running instantly, or can be adapted at your discretion to suit the needs of your students.
Video & Written Lessons
Each of the three Space Rocks lessons are available in two forms:
- A Written Guide slideshow.
- A Video Guide slideshow.
Both slideshows are supported by Canva, and contain the same information. We’ve also included a few blank slides so that you can add your own ideas and activities to the lesson plan.
Student Workbook
The Student Workbook is for your students to use. It gives them easy access to all the resources and support they need, including:
- Activities: Challenges that allow students to develop their Space Rocks project, i.e. power-ups, leaderboards etc. These can either be used in class or assigned as homework at your discretion.
- Homework sheets: These sheets have been developed by GameMaker alongside the homework activities, but they can be adapted to better suit the needs of your class. We’ve also included an answers sheet for homework tasks to help you mark your students' work.
- Video guides: Educational videos, created by GameMaker developer Aaron Craig, that teach the basics of GameMaker.
- Testing checklist: Test and check the functions of their game.
- Best practices checklist: Understand the principles of proper workflow management.
- Student Evaluation: Analyse projects and identify areas for improvement.
Game Files
Within the .zip file, you’ll also find a series of game files, including:
- The complete yyp files for each lesson chapter.
- The exe file of the completed project.
Use these files to see how the final product should look and perform at each stage of development.
Students can also use these files to edit and mod working builds of the game, or examine their code to better understand how Space Rocks functions.
Happy GameMaking!
