Learning through games

I’ve got my two button game working now. It’s fun watching people play a game that you’ve made. They start doing things that you weren’t expecting. But sometimes you find out other things too.

The gameplay (press the red button if there are more red lights lit, blue if more blue) is simple, but I make the task more interesting by adding more colours and making the colours move around the lights. Then I thought I’d make the lights flash on for half a second and then off, so that the player has very little time to count them.

This actually makes the gameplay seem easier (at least for me). The brain seems to retain the information for a while so that you can work out the answer, even with a very brief look at them.

I think this is the basis of “flash cards” although I may be wrong. But it is a useful reminder of the way that you can start going down really interesting tracks when you start fiddling with games.