How pupils can create their own game with AI

Don't start with graphics or image generation

At the start, give groups a simple constraint. The game should take five to ten minutes, have a clear goal, and the player must understand what to do within the first minute. It could be a board game, card game, escape activity, text adventure or simple digital game. The choice of format depends on students' ages and experience. Avoid ideas for a 3D game unless creating one is directly part of your school's field of study.

Have groups first describe the basic situation: Who is the player? What do they want to achieve? What stands in their way? How do they know whether they have won or lost? Only when they can answer these questions in one sentence does it make sense to work on the story, characters and appearance.

The first prototype should be quick and imperfect

Paper, pencils, cards and a few figures are usually enough. For a digital game, the first run-through can be drawn as a sequence of screens. The goal is not to create a finished product, but to find out as quickly as possible whether the rules are clear and the player's decisions are interesting.

Assigning roles can help a group: one person keeps track of the rules, another prepares content, another assembles the prototype and someone records problems during testing. Roles can rotate. What matters is that creation is not dominated by a single student who already knows how to work in Scratch or another tool.

Throughout the project, record progress, fixes and mistakes, and save your work regularly. AI tools can freeze, a program can crash and the internet can stop working.

Don't know much about games? The children do

Games can be very complex and contain a whole range of mechanics – their own economy, combat, logic or timing rules. Above all, guide students to prepare and test the simplest possible version of their intended game, and only then expand it. Start with one main game element, such as points, score, coins, stars or gems. Once the basic mechanic works, you can add further layers.

Below are several types of games that can work well for a project in their simpler form. You don't need to present them to students – they know dozens of games themselves and are more likely to struggle to choose one or two. The overview is intended mainly for teachers, so they know what language the children are speaking.

• Text games – essentially interactive books, which can be accompanied by sound effects, music, images or simple animation. The principle is based on a story and choosing how it continues. You need to prepare the story and its branching; AI can be used effectively for a first version and for testing the game.
• Card games – for example, various versions of the ‘higher card wins’ principle. Modern games often combine collecting cards, expanding a collection, a story campaign or battles against live players in PvP mode. Make sure students don't combine too many variants. Start simple and add further elements only once the foundation works. Balancing the strength of the cards can be particularly challenging.
• Clicker games – the principle is repeated, often rapid clicking. The player can defeat ever stronger opponents, ideally in a non-violent way, or mine resources and then spend them to improve the effect of clicking. It might involve catching balloons, collecting points or clicking on alien UFOs.
• Matching games, or match 3 – logic games based on matching three or more identical objects, shapes or colours, for example on a chessboard-like grid. Matched items disappear, the player earns points and new ones appear on the grid.
• Defence strategies, or tower defence – enemies constantly approach the player along a set path, for example ants trying to carry off food. The player places obstacles or traps in their way and tries to stop them. Creating the path itself can also be part of the game.
• Role-playing games, or RPGs – the player uses collected resources or loot to improve their character, cards, dice, attributes or spells. This element is often part of other types of games.

For school projects, steer clear of popular shooters such as FPS games, multiplayer battles on one map such as MOBA games, and similar formats.

Use AI as a teammate, not as the author of the whole game

Students can ask AI for a few obstacles, rule variations, short texts for cards, or to check whether the game description contains all the necessary information. They can also have it simulate players and look for situations where the rules contradict each other. However, outputs need to be selected and adapted. A game assembled from AI's first ideas tends to be incoherent and hard to test.

Test the game's principle without elaborate graphics and music. Only once the game mechanic works and the rules are refined should you enrich it with images, ideally created by the students, and sounds, ideally also recorded by them. Limit pure AI image generation, and for music raise the question of where content comes from and copyright. Students should be able to say what they created themselves, what was made with AI support and where other materials came from. Do not enter personal data or photographs of classmates into prompts. Do not download or use content from the internet unless you have first verified the rights to use it.

Mind the licence – where to find images, animations and sounds for your game

There are libraries on the internet from which materials can be downloaded for free. But before students put any file into a game, they should always check its licence. Just because an image or sound can be downloaded for free does not mean it can be freely used and published in your own game. We recommend reviewing the sources before the project, so you know what they offer and under what conditions.

For school projects, the following are suitable, for example:

• Kenney – ready-made game characters, environments, icons, buttons and sounds; individual packs are generally published under a CC0 licence.
• OpenGameArt – images, animations, game backgrounds, music and sounds; the specific licence must be checked for each file.
• itch.io – game assets with a CC0 licence, such as free characters, objects, animations, environments or parts of the user interface; also check the licence on the page of the specific pack.
• Pixabay – photographs, illustrations, GIFs, music and sound effects; under the Pixabay licence, content can be used and edited free of charge, but cannot be sold or distributed as a standalone unchanged file.
• Freesound – an extensive database of sound effects; the easiest approach is to search for sounds with a CC0 licence, while the CC BY licence requires the author to be credited.
• Mixkit – music and sound effects for personal and commercial projects; check the licence for the relevant file type before use.
• Wikimedia Commons – images, animations, audio recordings and other media; individual files may have different conditions, which are stated on their page.

If students will be searching for materials themselves, give them a simple rule: choose files marked CC0 above all. These can be used, edited and published without having to credit the author. The CC BY licence also permits use and editing, but requires the author to be credited. The NC label restricts use to non-commercial purposes, ND prohibits modifications, and SA may require the adapted work to be published under the same terms.

For each downloaded file, students note its name, author, the address of the original page and the licence. At the end of the project, they use this information to create a simple ‘Credits and sources used’ screen in the game. In doing so they learn not only to work with digital content, but also to respect the work of the people who created it.

Even the label ‘royalty free’ does not in itself mean a file can be used without restriction. Nor is it safe to download an image via a search engine or take a GIF, music or character from a well-known film, series or computer game. A search engine only shows where a file is located; it does not grant the right to use it.

A playtest is not a final presentation

The game must be tried by someone who was not involved in creating it. The authors first hand over only the rules and watch whether players can get into the game without further explanation. They record where the game stalls, what is too easy, what takes too long and when players stop knowing what to do.

After the first test, the group chooses one or two changes. They might shorten the rules, change the order, adjust the difficulty or remove an element that only complicates the game. In the final sharing session, they then show not only the finished game, but also the problem the test revealed and the change they made as a result.

Simple games created in Scratch, MS Excel or PowerPoint, an interactive book in MS Word or a clickable prototype built in Lovable can be a nice addition to the School Digital Studio. They can expand the portfolio of the school's digital platform or be presented on the school website.