So, last post I talked a bit about the sorting out process for the Kingdom. Let me explain a bit.

First, if you are new here, The Kingdom is an online gaming environment that is Christian education presented in a fun adventure video game for ages 4 to 18. You can check out the video on our home page for a brief synopsis with Jake and Judah.

Within the Kingdom there are many doors and behind each door is an adventure. Complete the adventure and you get an award patch. It is the adventure part of the game that is educational. Due to that aspect, making it really fun and challenging and interesting matters. Now at the onset, when I was given the vision of all that Go Godly would become, this was the first part. I sat and in less than a year I had written 27 to 30 curriculum questions, studies, directions for 7 levels of game play. Each level had a certain number of required items that needed to be completed to get a patch for that adventure. Tiny Torches our littlest group had to do 3 activities while Lightning Leaders need to complete 8 and a synopsis. My thought was all this would be done like click on the teapot and up pops a pdf. Complete the activity and send in a picture or attached the document to an e-mail and our team will check it and award the patch on the child’s online award page. OHHHHH am I naive.

God had bigger plans. Oh am I naive!!! Instead, behind each door is an adventure area. Let’s say an amusement park. Cool enough. And within that amusement park are 7 different areas – 1 for each level. So, if you enter this area as a Tiny Torch, you may only go into the area where your adventure awaits, but if you have been a member for several levels and you go into this area again, you can do the current age level adventure and still visit previous areas. Confused. Yeah I know, but here is the basics.

Entry for Amusement park brings everyone to the Merry Go Round. There will be a sign there showing where each area is so 1) Kiddie Rides 2)Water Ride 3) Rollercoaster 4)Fun House 5)Shooting Galleries 6)Race Cars 7)Tunnel of Treasure. In each area, there will be things the avatar must do to find the questions and solve the puzzles to complete their adventure. However, there are also fun games and silliness to be had in each area as well. And, there may or may not be things that happen to detour, kick out or mix up the avatar in certain levels.

So, when I wrote the curriculums this part wasn’t “my” idea of how this would go. I grew up with PONG for heaven’s sake. This is clearly not that. So, I have been going through all the curriculums and coordinating and restructuring so they can be done within game play. What does that mean in English for non-gaming peeps like me. Yeah, that is the trouble right there, by the way. And who would think this would be something God could help out with? Not, me that was for sure and yet here we are and yes, God is on it. I’m amazed daily.

So, what this means is first, I needed to figure out a different land for each door in the Kingdom – currently there are over 100 doors per level, but not all will have content in phase one. Right now I have about 50 adventure areas outlined. More are coming, but that will do for this phase, I hope.

Then divide each area into seven sections. Although daunting initially this was genius – thank you God. Because it simplifies things for me and programmers as each house on map is numbered 1 through a 175 or something right now. So, let’s say amusement park is in house #1. That house will have the same land in it on all levels, we can just move the house location on the map and change the name and details on the doors which tell kids what they will be learning or doing. You don’t know what land is in there till you use a key to go inside. So far the 50 lands are outlined and probably 25 more are almost done.

So, now to take that rudimentary style curriculum of activities and questions and scripture studies and convert it into fill in the blanks, T&F, multiple choice, and pop ups to read, coloring pages, puzzles and activity directions that can be hidden within the adventure areas. This is in progress. This has also changed how the completion process works because in some of the older kid curriculum it matters what order things are found, so it needs to be positioned as such. It is an adventure all right moreso for me than anyone else at the moment though. LOL

Then, once I see how many questions and inserts are needed for each adventure, I need to outline a basic concept and location key for the designers so they can connect all the gameplay dots together to facilitate the game being fun and at the right level of difficulty for each age level, while still providing the learning opportunities and assuring the learning happens within the fun and adventure. This is just started and was a beat head on wall moment for Pong girl over here. I wasn’t inquiring with God because silly me, but yes, God guides the ignorant on game design basics. Who knew? LOL.

So, this is all great, parents out there are thinking but my kid would hate having to answer questions they are used to instant gratification and fast paced action. I know. More importantly God knows. As I was working on one area for the oldest kids, it all started in a garden which seemed pretty, but mundane until there was a talking hummingbird, a bee swarm, a fountain, a broken mosaic that is a puzzle and when together opens a door into another area where there is quick sand, waterfalls, and all manner of complications meanwhile, to get out of this or find the thing you need for that, you need to find clues and answer them. I couldn’t even believe what I typed as I was typing it. I do have faith though that kids are going to really have fun and better yet, develop a relationship with God and more knowledge of scripture, along with some other fun and interesting topics.

So, that is what I am talking about when I’m working on coordinating the list of things. There are lots of other aspects, but this is a big part of the goodness happening. I truly cannot wait to see it all come together. I even know who I’m hiring to design it. Spoke to them and was assured if I can conceive it they can create it. The estimate is about 2.5 million that doesn’t include security, hosting, IT hires or expansions, but one thing at a time.

So continue to pray for provision, protection and if able, donations are always appreciated so very much because just keeping this little webpage running and keeping our business license up each year costs money out of pocket. If you ever had a biz you know everything costs money. This is a passion project and God is providing as we go and I’m sure he will provide when we are ready to hire. And all that is coming beyond this is equally spectacular. It’s huge and wonderful. But, first things first.