GDevelop amidst COVID-19

Over the weekend, I began exploring GDevelop. It is an open-source, cross-platform game creator designed to be used by everyone - no programming skills are required to use the software. The Core library, the native and HTML5 game engines, the IDE, and all extensions (respectively Core, GDCpp, GDJS, newIDE and Extensions folders) are under the MIT license. However, the name, GDevelop, and its logo are the exclusive property of Florian Rival (a software engineer at Google).

Starting with a beginner tutorial on a tank shooter game, I started to develop a game in which a vaccination needle (replaccing a turret) could 'shoot' at little brown viruses (in this case non-microscopic parasites) as they randomly appeared from the edge of the screens and made their way to the centre of the page where the needle was as if attacking it. If one is not fast enough in 'killing' the virus, one would lose a life as denoted by the heart at the top right of the screen. Three lives lost and 'GAME OVER'. That was the basic gameplay. You can try it below.

I shared the first version on Workplace to get ideas from other public servants and that was where I got feedback and suggestions to improve it further. In my second version I changed the 'shooter' to an animated yellow glove with a cloth shooting green coloured viruses but one ccould run out of ammo. The ammo could then be replenished by tapping on the sanitiser bottle. I figured that this way young children (or the young at heart) playing this game would subconsciously learn that it is important to clean consistently and sanitise regularly.

Considering that there were templates that could be edited freely as it is open source and that there was no need to code (just a bit of computational thinking), I decided to look for ways to make more educational games or interactives. Below are 2 works-in-progress I created with some designing/editing/programming. One which is about magnetism could be relevant for primary school Science while the other is an isometric 'RPG'-like game with Gruffalo characters for primary school English language learners too. Do try these games out and share with me your ideas on how to make them better and I will credit you for it if I take up your suggestions. Thanks in advance!