Stuart's Ride

created by
The Butler Lab School Book Club

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The Life of a Video Game

In the Fall of 2012, our bookclub gathered daily to read the book Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms. We enjoyed reading about the main character, Stuart, and his adventures while he searched for his Great Uncle Tony's magic workshop.

When we finished the book, we debated how to represent our thinking. The ultimate goal of our project-work was to deepen our understandings of the connection between reading, writing, literacy, and the arts and then share our expertise with the greater school community. The group of boys brainstormed over several days, and the idea of creating a video game had a persistent presence.

While the idea was intriguing to all, the obvious roadblock of how to actually create a video game consumed our discussion for days. Their solutions implied youthful simplicity.

  • Ask the arcade man.
  • Look it up.
  • Just go to Dave and Busters.
  • Have a company bring it in. Like Fed Ex.
  • Go on Safari. Find out what company makes video games.
  • Or Brighthouse Networks. What is Brighthouse Networks?

The enthusiasm of the group took precedence over their pragmatism. Even though we discussed the fact that we did not have any practical means to develop our own video game, each child became engrossed in the fantasy of what it could be like.

All of our ideas gather so much momentum, we reach out to a computer programmer who listens to our ideas and tells us exactly what we hoped to hear:

“That's doable.”

What is a Game?

We talked about what makes a game. We talked about soccer and chess. For example in soccer:

  • A game has a goal.
    • The goal is to score more points than the other team
  • A game has rules that constrain how you can play it.
    • You can only touch the ball with your feet
    • You have to stay in bounds.
    • You have to kick the ball through the goal to score.
  • A game has obstacles and challenges that make it difficult to achieve the goal.
    • The other team is trying to score goals and you need to prevent them from doing so.
    • The other team is trying to prevent your team from scoring goals.

Building Our Game

Making choices collaboratively requires us to debate, question, and challenge each other. Over time, we come to a consensus and begin dividing the game into segments.

What is the goal of our game?

How do we achieve the goal?

How can we make it harder to achieve the goal?

Computer Jon offers support and leaves us with many decisions to make and tasks to complete.

“You have to do a lot of work. It doesn't take one person to build a video game.”

Nathan

Our game really began to take shape once we had our decisions and drawings made.

“Computer Jon helped us and told us how we would make it and stuff. We made all the places where Stuart went in order.”

Andrew

We added color on the computer to our scanned drawings and put them in an order that matches the book.

The game starts with a scene of Stuart's house drawn by Noah.

Players then travel to Reid's drawing of the town library.

Lucas' sketch of the train station offers many opportunities for adventures.

Andrew's drawing of the warehouse apartment shows some of the details from the book.

Uncle Tony's house is drawn by Spencer, including the chimney where a secret is hidden.

Jonah drew his interpretation of exhibits at the museum.

The video game ends with Nathan's drawing of Uncle Tony's workshop.

I've learned that making video games is hard. It is hard because you have to draw a lot. And if we actually made the screen and everything it would be really hard. It wouldn't be easy unless you are really skilled at it. I hope people will think that it's pretty cool that a 7 year old made a video game.

Jonah
Lucas: It could have Stuart, June, April, and May chasing each other in town. And Stuart goes into the telephone booth. With controls at the bottom. And you could have three lives.
Jonah: Maybe you go up to the triplets and you click an X to get out of talking to a triplet. There could be a house with tons of coins and you use the money to pay for a house on Beech Rd. And you can buy jet packs. Three pence is the coin, so you put the coin in a machine and get something useful like a jet pack.
It could be charged.
Andrew: It could be like Lego Star Wars and DS games. You try and get coins along the way. In Lego games they use weapons, sound effects and commercials. We could put those in there. But it's mostly about the coins. You have to have enough to get three numbers of a combination and four hearts before you die. We could be in the World Records for the youngest kid in a video game.
Nathan: There could be like a little show and then you come back to the game. You have all the lives, or if you waited, there is a hint and when the goo comes all up, press it if you are stuck. Stuart should not be tall. His parents are giants to him. We could draw what the screen looks like, and if two are the same, then it will be the game.
Reid: On Level 2, you could find out about the triplets, walk around the town, and go to the phone booth. It could have coins in weird places and you jump up to get them, then go back to the bank and if you don't have enough money you go back to Level 1. If Jeannie got your finger stuck in a trap, then you lose a life, and you have to eat toffee to get a life back.
Spencer: You could run around like a Wii game. And run into coins. And run into the triplet named April and ask her for help. We could have 7 players because there are 7 people in bookclub. There could be a line at the top with 5 hearts, and if it's red you have one or it blinks, you lost one.
Noah: Stuart can ride on a bike with lines to show it is fast, and it could let you push a button to go fast, and then you could save it if you want. It is like the levels are chapters. There are a lot of levels. 31! And pause in the corner, you can press pause. And a number in the corner of the coins, and a score thing.