Hey there,

I'm a psychology student and the goal of my bachelor thesis is to develop a game able to measure working memory in children (their ability to maintain information in their short-term storage and manipulate these information simultaneously). However, I have little to no experience in game development, and I'd like to ask you some advices.

The game is sopposed to be very simple in it's nature. My idea is that the child would be shown a map of a city with several directions to follow, and it is supposed to replicate the sequence of directions in the correct order, causing the car on the map to move. Very important feature for me is to have the children's results recorded, since I'll have to analyze the data afterwards. Since it'll a pilot study, a sophisticated game design won't be that important at this point.

Do you think it is possible for me to develop the game on my own, possibly without coding? Is there any software you'd recommend to me? Do you have any other advices for my purpose?

Thanks in advance for any feedback and have a nice day. ?

This application/game seem simple but, as any project, it's scope can become a problem if you don't be careful. My understanding is that the game will support a research in child behavior, so the game itself don't have to be amazing, just good enough for children to play it.

As a starting point, I would recommend you write a simple Game Design Document (there's lots of tutorials for that). It will help you discuss important things, like the scope of the game, what it needs to achieve and how you plan to achieve it, what are the game mechanics and limitations and so on. It does not need to be perfect, but will serve as a guideline as the project evolves, helping to keep things on track.

WMresearch said:
Do you think it is possible for me to develop the game on my own, possibly without coding?

It's possible. You will need some understanding of coding (logic and algorithms), but you don't need a high level of programming experience to get good results. There are tools for visual/node based programming (which is still code, just presented in a different way). Check this list to get an idea: https://gamefromscratch.com/codeless-visual-scripting-game-engines/​ . I would avoid fully featured 3D game engines like Unreal and Unity. They are good, but maybe a bit too much for this project. Most engines allow to write data to disk, so recording results is not a problem usually.

WMresearch said:
Do you have any other advices for my purpose?

I don't know if you tried this, but this project looks like a good opportunity to partner with a student or begginer in game development. You get the game done (without the pressure of making it yourself alone), they get experience and a project to their portfolio. So, if you have someone who can join the project, it could be beneficial to both of you.

Dear TerraSkill,

thanks a lot for your insights. I will definately make the document and discuss the collaboration with my mentor.