An Arts Council England funded creative digital arts project

providing an authentic, collaborative experience

for children and young people aged 8 – 24

Young people worked together with our expert tutors

to make a virtual gamebook,

an interactive spooky adventure novel in which the reader is the hero

and decides what actions to take.

Style

The game is a gamebook simulator: like a book on your PC screen, but with lots of other ingredients to break up the text and make it a fun experience.

Intended audience

It was designed by and for so-called reluctant readers: young people who have, so far, not found a way to enjoy reading.

The explained to us what they find so challenging about reading traditional print books and told us what features a virtual gamebook should have to make reading more accessible and fun for them:

• Voice over narration
• Individual voice acting of characters’ dialogue
• Illustrations
• Animations
• Music
• Sound effects

Also, to add variety and reward readers for their reading progress:

• Puzzles
• 3D gaming sections

And to help with some of the issues the face in traditional reading:

• Character profiles
• Chapter recaps

In their own words:

The project was a huge success for our reluctant readers, as their teacher explained:

Thank you for everything this year. The project was so much fun. They have learnt valuable skills that they will be able to transfer to their lives and that they will always have a sense of belonging to something so amazing. They are more confident in themselves, and they will surely remember when they were part of creating a game and how their ideas came to life. Who else can say that? On behalf of my kids and myself, thank you for your hard work!

Participants at the Lydiard Park Academy School of Solutions (for pupils who need extra support) and St Mary’s Primary worked ogether to produce their own levels in a 2D platform game.

The had great fun collaborating on:

• Creating characters and then role-playing and being interviewed by their classmates (see above).
• Drawing their characters, making cutout puppets and doing stop-frame animation.
• Scanning their puppets and animating them digitally.
• Drawing and digitising backgrounds and props.
• Using all these assets to create 2D game levels in the style of the main game.