How to Make a Simple Game for Museums (Intro to GDevelop 5)

Video games are a fantastic and fun way to engage any audience and incorporate education in the museum. Valuable skills such as decision making, strategizing, concentration, and critical thinking can be explored through the use of video games in the museum space. Creating interactive games for the museum doesn't have to be difficult through the use of simplified programs such as GDevelop. GDevelop is a free, intuitive game development engine that allows people to create unique video games using an event-based system. Learning the basics of GDevelop can allow museums to implement new technology and interactives in their spaces without a large investment of time and effort.

A computer that can run GDevelop either through the online app of through the desktop app.

After you first launch the software, whether it is on the online launcher or through the downloaded app, you will be met with a screen that offers you a variety of tutorials to create a variety of different games, including a few prebuilt games that you can play around with.

To create your own blank project however, you have to click the blue button on the top right of the screen that says "Create A Blank Project." Once that has been clicked you will see a pop-up that will prompt you to give the project a name and determine where you would like to project to be located on the computer.

Tip: It is highly suggested that you choose a location on your computer that you can easily access, and give the project an identifiable name, so you will be able to locate the project again for future updates.

When you open your blank project you will be met this screen. This screen features the centre screen where you will be placing your objects and arranging the visuals of the game that players will interact with.

On the right hand side you have the "objects" panel that allows you import objects into the game and will list all of the current objects available to use that can be dragged into the centre screen.

On the left hand side you have the "properties" panel that will display object properties such as the name, size, coordinates in the game, and any variables attributed to the object.

Along the bottom of the screen you have the "layers" panel that allows you to change the background colour for the scene and add other layers to work on. Adding other layers allow creators to add a variety of objects and texts to the screen without permanently altering any images on the screen.

Now that we understand the interface we are going to be working with, time to add some game components to our future game!

In order to begin to create the game, you must first import objects that will be used in the game. These objects will range from background images, to the graphic that you will use as a player, to the buttons players will interact with.

To import external images as objects to use in the game, you must first click the plus (+) button in the top right of the "objects" panel. That will open a window that gives you options of objects to add to your game. First click on the "New Object From Scratch" text on the top right of the window. To add an image, click on the "sprite" option.

Once that is open, you will get the option to name the object on the top bar. To add the image, click the bottom right blue button "Add an Animation." You then click the white square that appears on the top left side of the window with the word "add" in the centre. Once you click that it will open your computer's files where you can find the images you have saved to add to your game.

Once you have selected your image, you click the blue "Apply" text on the bottom right of the window and you have successfully added an image to your game!

You can add as many images as you would like this way that you would like to be featured in the game.

Don't have personalized images for the game? Not a problem! Gdevelop has a library of objects that you can choose from to make any game you can possibly imagine.

To add premade objects, you click the same plus (+) button as before, on the top right side of the "object" panel on the main interface. After that you click on the "Search Asset Store" text on the top left of the window to bring up the variety of options GDevelop has.

To find the object you would like to use, you can browse the categories on the left side of the window, or you can use the search bar on the top. Once you have found the object you would like to use, you simply click on the image and then click the blue "Add to the Game" button on the bottom right of the pop-up window that shows up.

Once you have all the objects you want to be in the game, you get to make the game look pretty! To put the objects into the game, you need to drag and drop the objects into the "object" panel within the outlined box in the centre of the screen.

Anything that is placed outside of the central box will not be visible to the player.

Once the object is on the screen, you can modify the location of the object by simply clicking and dragging it to a new location. You can also modify the size of the object by clicking and dragging the dots around the object.

In some instances, you might want to add properties to the objects in the game to give them unique properties. Some of these properties might include making them platforms, playable character, or draggable objects.

In order to add behaviours to objects, you must first double click on the object you wish to apply it to. When you select an object, the default page that appears is the properties page. To change it to behaviours you want to click on the "behaviours" tab along the top blue ribbon of the window.

From there, you click on the blue "Add a Behaviour to the Object" button on the bottom right. Once you click that a list of behaviours will appear that you could apply to your selected object. To apply the behaviour that you want from the list, you simply click on the one you would like to choose and then once you see it listed under the object's behaviours, you click the blue text that says "Apply," on the bottom right side of the window.

Behaviours are not mandatory to create an working game, however it does allow you to incorporate different ways players can interact with the game!

Now comes the fun part, making the images interactive! In order to make that happen, you need to add events to our scenes. Along the top bar of the software you will see two tabs associated with the scene you are working with, one with only the scene name, so in this case you have "Intro Screen", and then right next to it you have the events for the scene, so here you have "Intro Screen (Events)." You will be using the events tab for this part.

Once you are on this tab you will see an empty screen that says add a new event. Click the text "Add a new event" to begin.

Before you add an event you first need to understand how it works. Since you aren't doing any coding, you need to tell GDevelop what you want it to code for you. Therefore, you have a simplified version of that using these events. These events can be seen as a cause and effect. On the left side you have the "condition". The condition is the action that the player does in order to move forward in the game. This condition results in an "action," which is on the right side.

When you click on "Add Condition," a list of different conditions appears. To focus on the simplest and most museum applicable options, focus on the "Mouse and Touch" and "Keyboard" options. This will ensure that your conditions are prompted by interacting with the objects either through touch, a mouse, or a key on the keyboard.

After you've selected your condition, you must choose the action to follow it. To do so, click "Add Action." Once you've done so you will see a list of actions to choose from. The most applicable in the museum will most likely be the "Objects" and "Scenes" options. These will result in the creation or destruction of an object, and the changing of scenes resulting from the previously set conditions.

Creating new scenes is an incredibly useful tool in GDevelop for the museum space as it allows to create a new page of information. Through the use of events, players can change between scenes through the ways they interact with the game. For instance, players can press buttons that are placed throughout the game and depending on the buttons they decide to interact with, the scene that appears may be different. This tool is a fantastic way to incorporate decision making and critical thinking in the games you introduce to the museum space.

In order to create a new scene, you simply have to click the two page icon on the top left side of the main interface window as seen next to the number one (1) in the images above. Once you bring up the game's menu, you left click the three dots next to a scene that already exists. This will bring up a drop down menu that will allow you to alter the current scene or "Add a New Scene."

You can add as many or as little scenes as you would like, depending on how you would like your game to progress. Once you have a new scene, be sure to refer to the previous steps to populate the page with objects and events!

Before you can export your game, you need to make sure that all of the components in the game work smoothly. In order to do so you must preview the game and make sure that all the mechanics in the game work.

To do so, you click the button on the top of the screen that says "Preview", once you do that you will be able to run through the game without exporting the full game.

Something that you must take into consideration is that you should test the game on a similar platform to what the game will be played on.

Meaning, if the game is meant to be played on a touchscreen such as a tablet or a smartphone, the game should be tested using a touchscreen surface.

Once you are confident with your game, you can export it so it can be played by your audience in the museum space! To do so, you need to click the "Publish" text on the top of the main interface window.

After you click that a window will appear with an option to "Generate Link" on the left in a blue button. I would highly recommend this option for exporting your game as it remains private and will not appear on any store. Additionally, exporting your game through a link you will be able to play the game on any platform that has access to a browser allowing museums to use any technology that they have access to from a computer to a tablet.

Once you click "Generate Link," you will have the option to copy the link to your game and play it on any system that meets the requirements of a web browser.

After you have your generated link, there is an option with GDevelop to track the stats of your game, meaning you can see how many people have interacted with the game. This would be a very useful tool for any museum evaluators that wish to review the success of your interactive within the museum space!

At the end of the day you made a game! So have fun with it, share it with your community, and learn!