PowerPoint Adventures: How I Turned Birthday Cards into Interactive Games

Thinking of creating games but do not know how to operate game engines like Unity, Unreal, Godot, etc? Or do you just want to have a “taste” of game development before plunging yourself into it? Well, you could consider learning to create games by using PowerPoint too!

The idea of creating games using PowerPoint started when I was working in my previous job. We were a bunch of closely-tied team, and we would create little surprises for everyone’s birthdays. Usually, we made birthday cards, but this time round, I decided to do something different, and this is how my little journey of creating “mini-games” on PowerPoint started.

Personally, I would not consider my first two projects as “games” but as interactive PowerPoint with simple clicking mechanics. This idea came to me when I recalled watching a video teaching how to create interactive PowerPoint slides where pictures, texts, etc will pop up when you click on certain “buttons” to activate them. The idea is similar to visual-novel games in which you click on items in the game, and it would lead the narratives. Since the projects were made for birthdays, the popped-up items were birthday wishes from other colleagues, but without a story.

The first thing I did was develop ideas such as building a theme. I took inspiration from what my colleagues like and tried to place these elements together. For instance, one colleague loves Pokémon especially Pikachu, and hotpot. With these elements, I decided to create a hotpot full of different ingredients, and with some Pikachus. Here, clicking the ingredients in the hotpot would activate the mechanics where a birthday message would pop up. The idea here was each ingredient in the hotpot represented each colleague’s birthday message.

Considering it would be boring without any sound effects or music; I added an uplifting soundtrack where that would start playing when the PowerPoint is being presented, Pikachu’s voice appears when clicking on the ingredients followed by a cute “pop” sound while returning to the “main page” – the hotpot scene. I also added a simple instruction as a guide, similar to games where there would be short tutorials or instructions on the gameplay. Lastly, I gave the project a creative name, and voilà, a specially personalized and interactive electronic birthday “card” is done!

When it came to my third project, I decided to add narratives to make the overall experience more interactive and immersive, and this was when the following projects appeared more like a “game” to me. This time, I took inspiration from Stardew Valley since my colleague is a huge fan of the game. I created a simple storyline of Mr. Qi (one of the characters in Stardew Valley) giving the player a mission to collect all of the corn (my colleague loves corn) in the maze I created to discover the final prize. Although the storyline and gameplay mechanics were rather simple, I gained deeper insights into game mechanics such as techniques for timing the appearance sequence of objects, music, or sound effects to create a more coherent and seamless gameplay experience.

Although some may say that my projects are not really “games”, but I have learned so much about game development and these experiences inspire me greatly. The key takeaways from my experiences are to be flexible, creative, and resourceful.

Developing ideas can be difficult at the beginning of the project. Still, I found that taking inspiration from the simple and subtle things in life such as my colleagues’ likings, their pets, the movie, or game characters they like, or simply through my observations about them helped in the process. There are many ways in which we can play with different elements and ideas, which is why being flexible and creative are some of the main qualities from my experiences. Being resourceful is also equally important, and I would say I have learned so much from the internet, from YouTube tutorial videos to websites that provide free-to-use sound effects, soundtracks, clip art, etc. Most importantly, the most rewarding and satisfying moments were seeing how much my colleagues enjoyed and appreciated them. Developing a game from scratch can be daunting, but I am glad that I took the challenge, and it was absolutely rewarding.

These are my experiences of creating games using PowerPoint. Would you like to try it?

 

 

Pictures:

Feature image from Stardew Valley’s official website (ConcernedApe, 2016) https://www.stardewvalley.net/press/

Other images are from the author.

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