Life and other priorities have slowed down development of Rule the School!, but I am still making progress.
Kids Rule The School! is a simpler version of the game aimed at younger players. prototypes are available now.
Made some major changes to the main game to address two major issues. First, the game was still playing too slowly. Ideally, children should be able to get through a game in one recess or lunchbreak or downtime at school. I removed the need for rolling dice entirely, basically having players draw a class card and going directly to the class. this meant some significant rule changes to aspects that involved moving across the board. This also meant changing the role of the Principal’s office. Secondly, I reduced the win condition from ten credits to five. And since almost all of the New Rule cards pertained to moving across the gameboard, they were rendered unnecessary and eliminated. In their place, I introduced ten “Offsite” cards, which give players a small citizenship point boost based on factors outside of school that affect behavior. This is in response to a critique by some of the teachers and therapists that tested the game and thought there wasn’t enough nuance in how school behavior was evaluated. The purpose of this game is to spark dialogue between children and adults about behavior in school, and hopefully these mitigating factors can play into those discussions. furthermore, I consolidated these new offsite cards with the staff cards to form one umbrella category which I call “factors.”
I’m still very interested in producing a digital version of the game. but the process of learning one of these video game languages has been daunting. I was told Gamemaker was one of the easier apps to learn and understand, but it was primarily made for side-scrolling games. one can make a tabletop game with it, but I am having a hard time finding a good tutorial that can show me what I need to know. my investor suggested using Chat GP to come up with some basic code dictating how the game works. my barrier is that we were originally looking for that when I was trying to learn Unity, and I don’t know if Chat GPT can write code for Gamemaker.
Finally, there has been nothing new on getting more funding to further the game. We are putting together a grant proposal to develop an entire afterschool program around the game. we have a first draft near completion, but it needs to be proofread and refined, and even then I have no idea who to send it to.
wo hopefully this will bring the game closer to seeing its final form. more updates as they come.