This is the latest school game project I've made.
Concepting
Concept took a really long time, because we had very little input. Only a balance board and that's it. The client also wanted a game that could be used for all classes and multiple subjects. So we thought of some simple quiz-like concepts, but tossed those very quickly.
Then we had some better ideas where we let the player control a character and that opened up a whole lot of options.
After brainstorming with teachers we came up with a game where players can create their own city by performing math equations. This worked really well for our target audiance, because they like to explore and express themselves.
Developing
Everyone on our team had a big task and responsibility, which worked really well (e.g. one person for the whole generation of the city, one for math equations etc.). We were quickly able to create a pretty fun game.
Near the end of the project it went very slow, because we had all these other subjects we had to hand in, so we didn't have a lot of time left for our project.
Current situation
The game was released to the client a few days after finishing the school project. There are still a number of bugs in the game that we didn't have time to fix, but the client hasn't contacted us anymore.
Reflecting
I was responsible for the generation of the math equations and the values that you could pick up to complete the equation. I had a good approach and left space to open up more types of equations other than simple additions.
However after a few weeks I realised it wasn't going to be as easy as I've thought it would be, because it is very difficult to create a good learning curve. We decided to just look up some additions on the internet that suited our target classroom and that worked really well.
I think we created a very unique game that encourages players to keep playing and working on their physical health as well.