👩🏫 A Gamified Classroom Experience
- 2 mins 
Disclaimer: Teacher for a Day won Second Place at Eduhacks 2017!
Many people outside of the field of education are unaware or wondering what it is that teachers really do. To give them an idea, we came up with “Teacher for a Day”, a desktop game where players can experience a day-in-the-life of a high school teacher. We begin with lesson planning before moving into teaching, student management, and ultimately evaluating your teaching success.
The planning phase of the game will open up to a template of a day plan containing activities to be completed. This will then be followed by a teaching phase, where players assume the role of a teacher in interacting with their students through the selected activties.
Gameplay Preview
Completely built by a team of 5 within the 24 hours of Eduhacks 2017, this game currently features:
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top-down game mechanics, which allows players to experience gameplay via basic WASD movements, interactive dialogues, minigames, energy levels, etc.
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hand-drawn character art, portraying a range of emotions through facial expressions for each character
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carefully-crafted characters, students are laid out in table groups, which is a common layout in classrooms at all grade levels. While some students are average students, the teacher’s responsibility is to also look out for five personality types of students - the over-enthusiastic, rebellious, know-it-all - you get the idea.
Early character sketch
Gameplay
Players will act as the teacher and exchange dialogues with NPC students in lessons. In-game interactions are (mostly) inspired by real events, and the player must choose the correct response to each students’ question or comment. Failure to respond correctly can result in the student leaving the room. This in turn affects your game success rate/energy level, which will lose you the game if it falls below a certain point.
As a lesson progresses, the clock will tick. At a certain time in your day plan, a mini-game will be activated (photocopying worksheets, physical exercise, etc.). Successfully completing mini-games can increase your success rate bar, but will decrease your energy level. Energy levels are replenished via positive interactions with students and when you drink coffee or eat during snack time/lunch time in your schedule.
We came in Second Place at Eduhacks after demoing this game as our prototype! In a full game, we envision a visual, novel-style game in which the player would develop their relationship with their students each day. Injecting a sense of continuity will hopefully intensify player investment.
Final presentation.