Looking for an engaging way to teach game design to your students or children? Look no further thanSpace Rocks!

Based on the Atari arcade classic,Asteroids, Space Rocks is the perfect project for complete newcomers to game design or the GameMaker software.

Everything you need to create and teach the Space Rocks project are available to download below.

Download all materialshere

Educator’s Guide

The Educator’s Guide is your one-stop resource for all things Space Rocks. The Guide covers:

• How todownload GameMaker
• Troubleshooting and technical support
• How to teach GameMaker to students
• The Space Rocks curriculum and its educational outcomes
• All three Space Rocks lessons and plans.

The lesson plans and recommendations featured in this guide can be used verbatim to get your classes up and running instantly, or can be adapted at your discretion to suit the needs of your students.

Video & Written Lessons

Each of the three Space Rocks lessons are available in two forms:

• A Written Guide slideshow.
• A Video Guide slideshow.

Both slideshows are supported by Canva, and contain the same information.

Within the Lesson Folder, where you’ll find the link for the  Canva presentations, we’ve also included a PowerPoint version of each guide. These PowerPoint versions feature a number of blank slides, allowing you to add your own ideas to each lesson.
 

Student Workbook

The Student Workbook is for your students to use. It gives them easy access to all the resources and support they need, including:

• Activities: Challenges that allow students to develop their Space Rocks project, i.e. power-ups, leaderboards etc. These can either be used in class or assigned as homework at your discretion.
• Testing checklist: Test and check the functions of their game.
   
• Best practices checklist: Understand the principles of proper workflow management.

Game Files

The Space Rocks project comes with three separate files:

• Game files, including the complete files for each lesson chapter, and the completed project file
• Sprites
• Sounds.

These files will be available to use in both GML Visual and GML Code.

If you’re using GameMaker Version 1.4 to teach your students, please upgrade the most recent version of GameMaker. Check out our article on thedifferences between v1.4 and modern GameMaker builds.

Download all materialshere

Happy GameMaking! 
 

Written byFrank Moody

Frank Moody has been using game design to support students and educators in the creation of engaging learning experiences for over 15 years, including working with GameMaker, Unreal, and Unity.