Starboy

How do you teach code to kids?

By turning the semantics into puzzle pieces and their interactions.

Here, the alien wants a gold star. You have a gold star but you must use all the components. So, you put the star into the mechanism and it comes out. The basic idea of a function is taught.

Starboy (reduct) is a puzzle game that teaches code semantics to children.

I did game design and narrative. We submitted and were accepted to CHI EA ‘17:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3027063.3048415

Here’s the story: Starboy (transparent stand in for the little prince) crashes on various planets. To fuel his ship he has to help aliens get what they want.

Every planet has a different theme based on a programming concept.

And here are the aliens!