Our latest project has just wrapped up so you know what that means. It’s time for a summative post! So welcome to my summative post about the Tectonic Chances project.

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What Was This Project❓

Our new driving question for this project was “How are thematic and mathematical elements used in game design”. Our goal for this project, as always, was to answer the driving question. To do this we made our own games that we would implement different concepts into. Throughout the project we looked at different textbooks and learned about different aspects of tectonic plates in order to implement the concepts into our own games. 

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What Did This Project Include 🗂

This project included a lot of interesting things. I think that the best way to go about writing about them would be to discuss my favourite milestones and stepping stones that I found the most interesting and thought that contributed to my learning the most.

Milestone 1

Milestone one was a really helpful milestone. In milestone one we made a first attempt at coming up with the basic idea and rules for our board games. I found that this milestone was quite difficult as we didn’t have as much time as I would have liked to get down our first idea. This milestone did however give me and my partner a very good base to work off of for creating our final board game. We did end up changing some basic mechanics and ideas for the game but even in the final board game that we created you can see bits of this original board game.

Workbook Stepping Stones

Throughout the project we looked at different work books from a textbook in order learn about things related to tectonic plates. We learned about things like hotspots, mantle convection, the ring of fire, how islands are formed, different earth layers, etc. Each of these stepping stones went a long way in helping me understand tectonic plates and giving me the knowledge I needed for future milestones.

Milestone 2

In this milestone we took the different concepts we learned about from those textbooks and implemented those into our game. I found that this milestone went a long way in helping my partner and I start to take our ideas and see how they could be used in a game. This milestone also contributed a huge amount to our competency ‘Evaluating: Demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of evidence’.

Milestone 5

Milestone five was the milestone where we had to hand in a completed game. This meant it needed to include things like the rule book, our completed board, a game with all the science concepts implemented into it, etc. This milestone was a great one as we got to see all of our hard work pay off as well as see how science and mathematics can be implemented into a game.

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Competencies 🧐

Evaluating

For this competency we needed the theory of plate tectonics and supporting evidence to be a central theme of the game. I definitely did this as one of the big parts of my groups game is drawing different types of cards that relate to the theory of plate tectonics in order to act. We also needed to include ten key science concepts in our game. Our game definitely had at least ten science concepts. For example one of our concepts was types of faults which you can see implemented in the form of the fault card which determines how much damage a civilization would take.

Questioning and predicting

For this competency we were assessed on how we used our class time. I would say that I used my class time well and to my advantage. I handed in assignments often early in order to be able to get multiple rounds of feedback before the due date and have lots of time for corrections.

Understanding and solving

This competency focused on how probability was used in our game and that it was shown clearly in our instructions. We definitely did this one as our calculations for our probability was clearly shown on the instructions at the end. Not much more to say about this competency as it was pretty basic and simple and was a pretty small part of this project.

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Final Thoughts 🧠

And now for the million dollar question. How did we answer the driving question? Well the driving question was how are thematic and mathematical elements used in game design, and we answered it through creating our own games using thematic and mathematical elements.

Overall this was a really fun project. I’ve never made a game before so it was really fun to do that. I definitely learned a lot about plate tectonics as well as the earth. I don’t know when I will need that information but it was still super interesting to learn about all the theories are the earth. 

Read the rule book if you are interested by clicking HERE.