My students love my adventure games, and other teachers that I work with also love them. They’re fun, and they take up a lot of time; 45 minutes to an hour on average. And it’s a great way to take a break from a hectic day. When you can pull up something that someone else has made, something that you know will work, that last class of the day won’t seem so dreadful.
Anyway, let’s take a look at my Adventure Game “Mountain Plane Crash Adventure.” This game has students stranded on a mountain after a plane crash, and they have to get off. Think of Alive, just with your favorite, or least favorite, ESL class.
The opening slides are easy, and so are the slides that tell the rules. I want to tell you about making the problem and solution slides, or what they’d call in film class, the reversals.
Let’s start with the first reversal, or problem, the students will face. You can see from the picture that there are three main text boxes on the slide.
Now let’s take a look at the next slide, the solutions or results of what the students previously chose.
The rest of the slides are just continuations of that process. I always provide three choices and three outcomes for each problem, and I’ll have 3 to 4 problems in a game, including the final big problem that usually is make-or-break, or life and death. Try to make a small 2 slide game yourself, and if it looks good, just copy/paste your way to a great ESL adventure game.