Host an Arcade Night

Your students have put in the work and made some incredible games. Now it's time to show them off- and one of the best ways is by hosting an Arcade night!

What does it look like? Check out some real-world inspiration from teachers sharing their own arcades:

At an Arcade night, the school community can come together to play student games and celebrate their accomplishments. This can be a standalone event or part of an overall STEAM showcase. How it fits in your school and community is up to you, but here are some tips on running your own from real-life events:

DIY Arcade Cabinets

As a final step in the game-making journey, students can design and decorate their own arcade cabinets. This brings their hard work on the digital side back into the physical world in a creative, hands-on way.

Cabinets can add information to showcase. Beyond the name of the game and its creator, students can add background information, hints, and other tangible objects and art that bring the idea behind their game into real-life.

With just some cardboard and art supplies, students can craft these however they like. The Bloxels Arcade Cabinet Plans work with just regular letter-sized paper, and are a free download. Check them out here.

During the Event

Set the Atmosphere

Think about ways to make the environment tie into games, such as retro arcade elements or pixel art signage. Changing the lighting or background music can help. If available, make your Class arcade page available to play any of the games on a big screen. The more immersive the better!

Show the Process and Student Presentations

It's just as important to showcase the process and hard work that students put into their games as it is the final product. Students can volunteer to give short presentations to explain their game development process and answer questions from players. Artifacts from the brainstorming process such as student workbooks can demonstrate a lot, and can find a home next to the relevant games, can be displayed on walls, or shown on a rotating slideshow.

Encourage Playing and Feedback

Provide simple feedback forms or sticky notes for players to leave comments or suggestions for the game creators. If you want to add a competitive element, you can ask for votes on superlative categories, like "Best Gameplay" and "Best Character Design" or even "Most Difficult (but fun)" games, and announce the winners at the end of the event.

Here are some more tips on playtesting.

Use Your Class Arcade Page

Each class has its own custom Arcade page, available at a public URL on the Web. You can add a description for the class and share it with your community before, during, and after the event. You can set this up on the class Hub page- here's a tutorial on how to set it up.

Celebrate and Share

Through showcasing students' creativity and celebrating their hard work, you can create an Arcade night that people will be sure to remember. They'll also want to share the memory with others, so remember to capture big moments with photos and videos to share after the event. Whether it's on a private school site, or responsibly through social media, take the opportunity to share back with the students and the community as the Arcade night will become an experience that they will never forget.