There are about 20 items on my passion project list. Lately, I haven’t had much time for any passion projects. Most of the projects are time intensive, write a book, build silly game app, and so on. However, tonight, in avoidance of doing other work, I turned my attention to making a board game. I started by setting goals for the game. For example, what was the purpose of the game. I decided on it being a game for children that teaches them the basics of coding. The basics of coding being assignment variables, functions, conditionals and loops. For each subject, I came up with examples using real world objects. The examples for variables and conditionals were the hardest to discover. After this, I then brainstormed a theme for the game. I came up with a treasure hunt theme, in which each player uses pseudo code to move around the board in search of treasure. My draft board game looked like this:

My husband and I played a couple of rounds, and discovered some gotchas that will need to be fixed in the game rules. But overall, it was fun, and I felt less guilty about my procrastination.

My next step is play a few rounds with friends. So, if you’re in the San Francisco area, and would love to test it out, let me know. In addition, if you know any teachers of middle school students who would be interested in having their students play the game, please let me know. Would love to see how students respond to the game.

****Post written from phone, excuse any typos