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16th Annual Life.Love. Game Design Challenge: Critical Thinking

A topic by Jennifer Ann's Group created Mar 09, 2023 Views: 472 Replies: 6

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About our Annual Game Design Challenge

Since 2008 our nonprofit organization has run an annual game design challenge. Our focus is on prosocial games designed to help young people (ages 11-22) about important issues. We have produced over 60 games through our Gaming Against Violence program. The one rule that we follow every year is: no violence is allowed in the games.

Over the years the topics for our contests have included: bystander awareness, consent, culture, gaslighting, healthy relationships, power & control, resilience, and teen dating violence prevention. The topic for the 16th Annual Life. Love. Game Design Challenge is critical thinking: "the ability to analyze information objectively and make a reasoned judgment" (ThoughtCo). To learn more about critical thinking you can visit the contest website which offers more critical thinking definitions and links to many critical thinking resources: CriticalThinker.games

All of the games we have on itch.io come from our Gaming Against Violence program.
You can explore & play the games on our account: jag.itch.io

Several of these games have gone on to receive other awards and recognition. Most recently, the game 'Culture Overlord' was recognized as a 2022 Games for Change Awards finalist for "Best Learning Game" and was featured at the Games for Change Festival in NYC July 2022.

Our program and its games have been featured on Wired, The Hollywood Reporter, NPR, and more.

Currently all games are free and contain no ads.

About the Critical Thinking Game Design Challenge

Theme: critical thinking Prize money: $10,000 (USD) Entry deadline: March 19, 2023 Eligibility: ages 13 and up
Website: https://CriticalThinker.games

The Critical Thinking Game Challenge consists of two rounds. For Round One, contestants will submit a game pitch. Finalists will be selected from those game pitches. For Round Two, the Finalists will have three months to create a video game based on their game pitch.

►Each Finalist who submits an eligible game is guaranteed a prize of at least $100 (USD).
►The Winning Game is guaranteed a prize of at least $3,000 (USD). The total prize pool is $10,000 (USD).

Visit the website for resilience resources, full game rules, FAQs, and to submit your game pitch.

The deadline is March 19, 2023. Good luck!

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Afloof.devModerator1 year ago(+1)

Hey there,

I was reading information about this and noticed the following:

Ideally you will use Unity to develop your game. Due to its large user base it is easier for us to get support if needed and the majority of the games we have published in the past were developed using Unity. Also, it is generally easier for us to export Unity games to a variety of platforms. Importantly, Unity supports exporting to HTML5. Browser-based games are often more accessible because they can be played, for example, in public libraries and at schools. We strive to publish games that are accessible.

Does that basically mean that people will give you the source code of the project, and it’s up to you to compile it and share it to other platforms?

On that note, do you have any policy for games made with a custom engine?

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Jennifer Ann's Group1 year ago(+1)

Thank you for your interest in our contest -- and for reaching out with your question.

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TL;DR: yes and it depends.
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Yes, if they are selected as a Finalist, the Finalists submit the source code and assets along with their compiled game and a video trailer. This allows us to validate the game before we release it to the judges. We want to be sure that the game works properly for the judges and also need to confirm that the content meets the contest rules.

After judging, the winning game(s) will also undergo some additional work before publishing. These changes are based on the critiques by the judges. The game devs are welcome to do the additional work if they'd prefer or we do it ourselves.

That said, it is not strictly necessary to use a commercially available engine. However we would need to have access to the necessary components to replicate that custom engine in order to fully test the game and then, if it is a winning game, prepare it for publishing. We have done things like this before in a limited way, but it would depend on the difficulty of using that custom engine.

After the game is published we occasionally do have to make updates. Some of them are based on policy requirements at the app stores (currently Apple wants us to update the games we have in their AppStore) or other technical changes (when we were using Google Play they were regularly updating target API level requirements). And sometimes the dialogue includes out-dated cultural references that we'd like to update.

When we began this competition in 2008 most of the games were developed with ActionScript for Flash. Most of those games have not been readily accessible for a few years. Although we've converted one of those games into a downloadable Windows executable (jag.itch.io/graces-diary) and made a few content updates whle doing so, we are trying to avoid running into similar problems as we did with Flash.

We are a very small charity and have very limited resources. But we are open to new ideas and appreciate innovation. We'd be happy to talk further about your custom engine and see if we could find a way to work with it.

Also: entering the contest only requires submitting a game pitch by March 19th. If the pitch is selected then you would become a Finalist and develop that pitch into a game from March 30th until June 30th.

Please let us know if we can provide further insight. And thank you again for your interest and your question!

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Afloof.devModerator1 year ago(+1)

However we would need to have access to the necessary components to replicate that custom engine in order to fully test the game

I make my games using a programming language I’ve designed, combined with a compiler and a custom game engine I developed. Currently it’s possible to compile automated builds for Linux, Windows and Android using Github Actions, so someone with programming experience should be able to compile and modify such games from source.

The game devs are welcome to do the additional work if they’d prefer or we do it ourselves.

I understand my case is a bit niche and it might be difficult for a 3rd person to make changes on my projects, given it’s a unique programming language.

Having said that, this seems like an interesting challenge. If such projects are allowed, do let me know. If not, no worries, it’s perfectly understandable :)

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Jennifer Ann's Group1 year ago(+1)

Yes, we would encourage you to submit your pitch for the game design challenge.

We will be able to figure out how best to proceed if you are selected as a Finalist. At that time it might be helpful to share more details about your language, compiler, and engine with us so that we could become familiar with them.

One nice aspect of our game design challenge is that several of the judges are usually professors teaching game design or running their university's game design labs.

Feel free to reach out with any other questions. We look forward to seeing your game pitch -- this year's is an especially challenging challenge!

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Afloof.devModerator1 year ago (1 edit) (+1)

Yes, we would encourage you to submit your pitch for the game design challenge.

Sounds excellent, I appreciate it :)

At that time it might be helpful to share more details about your language, compiler, and engine with us so that we could become familiar with them.

The language is called “avdl” and its compiler is open-sourced here: avdl on Github. There are details on how to install it locally on the README file of that page. There are some builds available for some Linux Distros, but those might be a bit out of date currently.

I made an open source game that uses this language, called “Rue” which can be found here: Rue on Github. To compile it, navigate to the game’s root directory from the command line and execute the compiler by typing the following command (assuming “avdl” is installed):

avdl

This should build and output a build ready to use locally in avdl_build.

This game has automated builds using Github Actions, that are created using “avdl” behind the scenes. The most recent build action can be found here: Rue v1.0.1 builds on Github.

The Github actions show the steps to generate a build, I’ll most likely have a similar set up prepared for any new project, so anyone should be able to make amends on the project and have Github re-generate the builds, without having to install “avdl” locally.

This is of course only relevant after the pitch stage. Feel free to reach out if any more information is needed. Looking forward to exploring this challenge :)