I looked on with envy at all those who made Unity games for their students until I heard of Bitsy (bitsy.org) and Twine (twinery.org) just a few short weeks ago. Both are easy to learn and I believe very powerful for classroom activities. I think they could be great for reviewing simple grammar and for unit reviews. The possible uses are endless...
They are extremely simple in-browser game engines. Put another way, you can make some super simple games for classes in your web browser! Then you can upload it to itch.io and share the link to the game with your classes via Google classroom or whatever you use. Itch allows you to upload for free and the students can play it in browser. Bitsy is great for simple retro-graphics-based exploration and text-based games whereas Twine is purely text based (great for choose-your-own-style adventures). I have yet to make anything with Twine but I dived straight into Bitsy and love it.
This YouTube tutorial playlist should be enough to get you to my level:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlXuD3kyVEr5sF4iM2CszNt-fSVZDqxUm&si=_gIW7Z27jscKqs_p
I have yet to figure out locked doors and more complex game mechanics yet.
I made a 3rd grade review activity that I have been doing this week which you are free to use. I will also share an empty version of the school (the "Base_School" file below) I made so that you can fill it with whatever you want!
Crazy School
Crazy School is the first game I have made. It is a full-year review of the NEW HORIZONS 3rd and 1st grade textbook (2nd grade later this week). I made a school and filled it with students and teachers that you have to talk to in order to fill out the accompanying worksheet.
To use it as an activity I put the students in pairs with one chromebook and gave them each a worksheet. I would explain how it works along with a short demo on the class TV. The first sentence is an example so the students can see how the questions work. They have to figure out what grammar fits the hint sentence (information is not presented in the target grammar), it is NOT a simple find, read and copy exercise. I put hint references on the answer sheet (these are NEW HORIZONS textbook specific) if the students are struggling as to which grammar they need. Then I explain that sentence 30 is a secret sentence and they have to find the 9 words around the school then unscramble to make a sentence out of it. Once the activity starts the JTE and I would make sure everyone has managed to start the game then after 5 mins or so start checking answers and giving hints if they weren't quite right.
I have done it as a final review class after a quick warm-up (so for about 35-40 minutes in class). No pairs finished all the sentences so you could probably do it as a full class activity and have enough questions. It is on the difficult side as I don't think my students get this kind of activity very often. Though I think it is good for them to try and find which grammar fits the context in the game and they loved it because they never get to play video games in class!! And also the JTE and I are there to give lots of help! Use your own judgement though. If you think it is too difficult, you can adjust the worksheet to add some hint words or do that to shorten the length if you so wish. Possibly add Japanese translation hints if you want to simplfy it even further. I added a simplified version which I would recommend for this activity. I'll leave the more difficult one up too though.
Update: I did these over several classes in different schools and I realised that finding the student in game, recognising the grammar and adapting it to fit into the worksheet was too difficult for most of my students. A pattern developed were I would do the activity, then make it easier after the class, then repeat. I need to have more of these types of activities so they have a better shot at this game next year.
Make sure you test the game link to make sure it works on your schools tablets/Chromebooks before using it in class. Itch.io could definitely be on your schools blocked security list.
I plan to work on my game naming for future games as "Crazy School" is a crap name... but one the students are sure to understand.
Have a great day and long weekend peeps!
Crazy school itch.io links;
The 1st grade game: https://jiggswalsh.itch.io/crazy-school-1st-grade
The 2nd grade game: https://jiggswalsh.itch.io/crazy-school-2nd-grade
The 3rd grade game: https://jiggswalsh.itch.io/crazy-school
"Base_School" is an empty school version of the "Crazy School" you can upload to bitsy.org and edit yourself.
"xxx Grade Full Review Bitsy Answer sheet.xlsx" are the worksheets for "Crazy School".