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How to Make a Microbe Game

Designing a game is a fun and educational exercise. Microbes reproduce in a mathematically precise fashion, but you can battle them with different things, leading to a solid basis for a logical game that you can use to teach how microbes multiply, invade the human host and do combat. Game design is as much art as it is science. Creating a playable game takes time, creativity and testing, but the end result uses entertainment to make the lessons stick.

Things You'll Need

Poster board
Pencils and markers
50 index cards
2 dice, differently colored
Flat glass stones

Instructions

- 1
  
  A honeycomb pattern gives six angles of movement rather than four for a square.
  
  Cut a square of poster board approximately 12 inches to a side. Cover the game board with a hexagonal pattern, like honeycomb. Each hexagon is a space during play.
- 2
  
  Microbes can be helpful or harmful to humans.
  
  Research microbes and use the index cards to record each fact you find concerning factors that check or accelerate microbial growth. Use these cards in play to influence the game for or against the microbes. Reserve 10 cards to be artificial measures, such as penicillin. This will tilt the deck toward ability to win.
- 3
  Write the rules, using the natural ability of microbes to replicate themselves exponentially as the base against which the human body player must fight. Each of the flattened glass stones, which you can find in a craft or floral section of a store, becomes one microbe, and the goal is to stop them before they completely fill the game board.
- 4
  Play test the game, using the dice to determine the body's natural defenses against the invading microbe. The microbe player should have one color, and the body another, with the highest rolls defeating the other. Each player should draw one card per turn and use that to influence the growth or regression of the microbe. While play testing, record ideas and new rules needed to keep the game from becoming one-sided or boring.

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