On Saturday, April 4th, Harmonix hosted a group of kids from the Flagship Computer Clubhouse's STE[A]M Punks Boston group for a day of game design with Harmonix Designer Alli Thresher. A group from MuckRock, a company that works with data from government records, presented a sample of data based on the huge amount of snow the Boston area had over this winter – budgets for removals, number of requests for assistance, and more. Then Alli presented a short overview of how we approach game design. The kids were instructed to make a game – either paper-based or using Scratch – based on the snow data.

For the rest of the afternoon, the kids worked in small groups, consulted with Alli & MuckRock, and created awesome games! One group made a game called The Lazy Penguin, where a very lazy penguin had to avoid falling icicles to get to City Hall to help the mayor remove the snow.

Another group made a tower defense game called The Ice where you deploy shovelers and fire bombs to protect the city from the invading snowmen. One girl made a board game called Snowpocalypse where you play as either a citizen, a worker, or the mayor and try to be the last to run out of money.

The kids (and the chaperones!) had a great time, and we were really impressed with the games they made in only a few hours.

For more images from the day, check out the Flagship Computer Clubhouse’s Flickr page. For more on the STEAMPunks Boston group, visit their site!