Set in the great outdoors, We wanted to create a game that will help teach children to count while also delivering an underlying message that encourages them to get outdoors and explore for themselves.
Accompanied by Bud and his critter friends each back garden location features a range of number counting games to help young learners recognise numbers and count.
Launch projectCleverly gamify essential skills through the use of an high-end, educational and fun game for primary school children
Because of the audience and the very nature of the game, we would have to ensure every idea stays true to the curriculum and approach to learning.
The game will need to feature very specific counting skills such as recognising numbers, one more, one less, counting groups and invisible counting.
This is an educational game that will help children learn to count, but we wanted to extend this further and encourage children to move away from their screens and continue the experience outdoors!
We wanted to feature real world examples of counting and demonstrate not only to the child but the parents that counting can take place anywhere - and you don't need to go any further than your back doorstep to experience this!
As perfectly demonstrated by "Baby Shark… do do do do do do" - songs are a perfect way to engage and educate young learners. We wanted to mimic -this success by including a range of educational songs that introduce the learning that players will subsequently experience.
With the greater ambition of these songs being featured on the bitesize youtube channel, both the animation and song quality would have to be polished to a high level of finish.
Establish a fun, flexible and importantly a familiar location to feature a variety of bright critters that will help learners count.
First and foremost we had to get the educational rigour of this game nailed! To make sure of this, we collaborated with with two educational consultants throughout the project.
Initial ideas, designs, characters, scripts, location and of course the actual learning games were all ran past educational consultants at all stages for sign-off before progressing to visual design / development stages.
After a few ideas we decided to feature this game in a back garden, splitting it in to four key areas that would each feature different counting interactions appropriate for the area.
The garden would feature fun and memorable characters, such as Bud - the friendly Bee that would guide players through the garden, introducing them to each zone and the type of games it contained.
When designing the game, we made sure that the all critters and interactive features would be bold, bright and simple. This meant that animation riggs could be quickly set up and avoid the risk of overly complex character features to that would require animation. Another benefit of efficient character rigging meant that skins could easily be swapped and as a result keep file sizes down.
Small file sizes would also allow us the possibility to import individual skeletons into a master animation file and so when multiple characters would feature in a scene we could animate them all together.
Buds Number Garden - A wonderfully fun and interactive game where learners count using a unique range of critter themed interactions!
In a nut shell - Buds Number Garden is MASSIVE! Buds Number Garden contains a total of 50 individual interactions, 4 music videos, 10 location settings, 9 characters and 11 types of counting lessons! Each interaction was also built with 3 variations so that repeat plays would not surface the same experience.
With Bud as the star of the show and with the help of his friends from the leaf pile, splishy splash pond and garden trees - learners have a range of fun places to visit and characters to meet every time they play.
Working closely with our illustrators we developed the perfect visual approach for bud, balancing bright, bold characters with focused and intuitive ui. Locations were fun and imaginative, but familiar and recognisable to players - subtly encouraging them to explore outdoors and see what they could find to count.
Setting the scene and introducing players to the gameplay they are about to experience, music videos were placed before each game.
Lasting around 30 seconds and animated using Spine, each video featured a fun and sometimes too memorable song for players to sing along to with their favourite characters.
