RMMZ Early Education Game

[Lady_JJ]

Saving the Cousins

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SECTION A: SYNOPSIS

Spoiler

Susan and Michael were playing in the forest with their six cousins. Those six cousins are now lost and Susan and Michael must find them. This is an early educational game designed for grade 1 math. Susan must solve math problems in these 3 areas:

• Telling Time (full, half and quarter hours)
• Counting Coins (pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters)
• Early fractions (halves, thirds, quarters)

This game was originally meant to be a submission to Spooktober Spooktacular Game Jam, but time ran out.

IMAGES/SCREENSHOTS

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Image 1


Image 2


Image 3


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Image 5

SECTION B: CHARACTERS

Spoiler

Characters were all generated with RPG Maker MZ.

SECTION C: STORYLINE/PLOT

Spoiler

The 2 siblings enter the forest where they first encounter 3 fairies. These fairies are more informational as to the plot development than anything else. After the fairy encounters, the siblings meet up with the 3 monsters who act as blockers. Susan and her brother can only find their way through the forest by correctly answering math questions. Once a correct answer is given for each of the 3 math monsters, the siblings make their way to the Hawthorne Mansion.

Inside the Hawthorne Mansion, the siblings must find all 6 missing cousins. The cousins are each in need of a specific fruit and vegetable in order to be saved. These fruits and vegetables can be purchased from Wendy in the garden outside the mansion. Coins for purchasing are won with correct answers to the math monsters' queries.

The math monsters appear with each transfer into a room (but not out of), up the stairs, or out to Wendy's garden.

SECTION D: SETTING

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The Hawthorne Mansion has 2 outside areas, both inhabited by witches. The inside of the mansion has a downstairs with 3 rooms and an upstairs with 3 rooms. Each room contains one of the missing cousins.

DOWNLOAD LINK

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A complete game can be downloaded from this Dropbox link. This early demo has a beginning and an end, so can be played as is.
Edit 12/25/2020 File reuploaded with all default se .ogg files.
Edit 01/29/2021 File reuploaded with forest graphic fixes for better aesthetics.

TO DO LIST

Spoiler

• More interactive graphics (lamps that turn on/off, fires in fireplace, etc.)
• More random choices for dialogues with math monsters
• Better title screen and intro cutscene
• Better ending custscene (final encounters with Sad Witch and Wendy, group making their way out of mansion yard into spooky forest back to intro forest)

More ambitious ideas

• Allowing player to name characters
• Allowing player to select a math level for advanced math problems

 

[Reinarc]

As a third grade teacher, I think this is such a great idea! I’ll be sure to check it out soon.

If you’re aiming to have 1st graders play it, do you think the vampire might be a bit too scary? I want to see if my students might be interested in this.

 

[Lady_JJ]

I was iffy about the vampire, but thought I'd just go with what I could find in the public domain / open source sites. I'm not opposed to using a cuter version if I can find one.

Thanks for the comment. I'd love to hear your feedback after you've had a chance to play around with it.

 

[AeroPergold]

Oh cool. I made an edutainment RPG Maker title years ago.

I feel like RPG Maker has potential to make some really engaging educational software with the right idea, plot, and team.

 

[Lady_JJ]

Would love to see it, @AeroPergold .

 

[Leokids]

Good! I Hope its Success and Its not some of the Basic Games with almost no Storyline.

 

[Reinarc]

I think most 1st graders just want something fun to play and don’t care too much about story. I guess it depends.

 

[1ManArmEStudios]

I never seen a Education Game made with RPG Maker! This is really cool!

 

[Celestrium]

I think games are an excellent learning tool and medium. I have seen several education games, and I have heard a teacher used a game he made in RPGMaker to show something to his History class. I wish you success in your game!

 

[Lady_JJ]

@1ManArmEStudios and @Celestrium , thank you both for your well wishes and taking the time to comment.
Edit: Missed your comment, @Leokids . I appreciate your comments as well.

 

[AeroPergold]

Would love to see it, @AeroPergold .

Game Jolt - Games for the love of it

gamejolt.com

Its called Tales of Your and it was a proof of concept for a game that taught math through puzzles and obstacles and features four different storylines ranging from dealing with a disgruntled fairy, a retelling of Cinderella featuring Margaret Thatcher, and a parody retelling of Pokemon RBY and MOTHER, with the later featuring an alien John F. Kennedy with the different names of Giygas stuck on the end of each part of his name.

Its insane to say the least...

 

[Finnuval]

Maybe this would be a bit more 1th grade friendly? as far as the vampire goes...



Though it might be a bit too childish. I dunno, My kid has entered the teen years so... totally different world lol

Other then that, great idea! Keep up the good work!

 

[Lady_JJ]

@AeroPergold Spent a bit of time playing the demo and liked it very much. Thanks for sharing. It's great to see other educational ideas out there.

@Finnuval I. LOVE. IT! I am not misinterpreting this gift, am I? I can replace my less than kid-friendly vampire with yours? I think your style is a far better match with the mummy and frankenstein as well. And the grey streak is just perfect to coincide with the charset. Thank you so much!

 

[Finnuval]

Yeah you can use it

You might have to resize it a little though, not sure as I just made it in a bit of a rush

Glad you like it tho

Ps: of it doesnt match the mummy and Frankenstein I prolly could do those to in this same style - - tho that would have to wait till after the holidays.

 

[Stupidbro]

Heads up! I don't know if this is something that happens with every installation or if something went weirdly wrong with mine, but I ran into several errors with loading alternate audio files:

Spoiler: Error Messages

I haven't found any others, but if I do, I'll try to keep you updated.

Edit:
Found a visual glitch:

Spoiler: Glitch

Edit 2:
This happened while I was using the menu during the game:

Spoiler: Menu audio error

 

[Lady_JJ]

@Stupidbro Well, that's embarrassing. I thought I had gone through and filled in every single sound effect I used. I wanted to keep the file size as small as possible. Thanks for pointing those out. I'm really at a loss as to how that happened.... At any rate, I have a new version with Finnuval's cute vampire to be uploaded. I'll replay the entire deployed game again before reuploading and hope I don't make any more mistakes.

I know where those sound effects happen, though. I'm flattered you went that far into the game.

As for the visual effect, I've never looked that far into the options. I guess I don't know what the non-glitched screen should be. Is this something that affects gameplay?

 

[Stupidbro]

As for the visual effect, I've never looked that far into the options. I guess I don't know what the non-glitched screen should be. Is this something that affects gameplay?

It didn't affect me too much, but that might be because I'm used to the control scheme. I could see how someone who hasn't used RPG maker games before might run into issues.

After a bit of tinkering with my settings, I accidentally stumbled across what it's supposed to look like:

Spoiler: Correct (I think)

However, from what I've seen, it's not possible to resize the screen using the built-in options menu and still get this result. I'd guess then that the issue is something in the part of the script that resizes the window.

 

[Lady_JJ]

Okay, I figured out how I missed all those sound effects. I checked all my events and they were okay. I apparently unknowingly deleted some very important system sounds. I'm going to copy all the default se .ogg files back in that folder just to be sure nothing else is lacking.

I haven't been able to reproduce the visual glitch. This is what I see.

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However, this is early in the game. I'll check again later in the game. It's possible one of the plugins might leave some residue. I'm going to go straight through the game again tomorrow for error checking and I'll keep checking the options screen for glitches.

 

[Stupidbro]

I haven't been able to reproduce the visual glitch. This is what I see.

Spoiler

View attachment 172807

Oh. Sorry, I just realized that I forgot to specify earlier that the glitch is triggered by turning off the Touch UI after you change the window size settings. It seems to work fine if you don't turn off the Touch UI.

 

[AeroPergold]

@AeroPergold Spent a bit of time playing the demo and liked it very much. Thanks for sharing. It's great to see other educational ideas out there.

I'll let you on a secret: how the math questions work in Tales of Your.

There is a massive Common Event full of conditional branches, a variable is used to pull a number range (let's say 1-10), each number in the range within the variable is tied to a conditional branch that contains a math question. If the question is completed successfully it will trigger a Self Switch, if not the Self Switch does not activate.

This could be done with chests, levers, and even enemy encounters (A failed question will trigger an encounter whilst a successful question automatically defeats the enemy and hands out the EXP and Money).

Here's a picture showing the common event itself:


I'm showing this off so if you need a jank but effective way to incorporate math into your educational game you have something is tried and tested.