AI Game Builder Guide | Levy County Schools

Bring Your Content Area to Life

Welcome, Levy County teachers! This guide will show you how to build custom, interactive HTML games for your students using Artificial Intelligence. You don't need to know how to code. By providing clear instructions to Gemini, you can create games tailored exactly to your subject—whether that's Florida History, 4th Grade Math, or High School Biology.

Step 1: Choose Your Game Style

Start by picking a classic arcade game style that students already know. Great examples include:

Block Breaker / Pong: Good for quick vocabulary matching.
Space Invaders / Galaga: Perfect for answering multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank questions to progress.
Platformer (like Mario): Great for collecting "correct" answers while avoiding obstacles.

Step 2: Define Your Content Area

Decide what learning objective you want to reinforce. Gemini needs to know the exact subject matter and difficulty level.

Example: "I teach 8th-grade American History. I want the questions to focus on the Civil War and Reconstruction."

Step 3: Write Your Prompt

Combine your game style and content area into a clear, structured prompt for the AI. Copy and paste the template below into Gemini, filling in the bracketed information with your own curriculum.

"Please build an HTML5 Canvas game in a single file (HTML, CSS, and JS combined). The game should play like [INSERT GAME STYLE, e.g., Galaga or Pac-Man]. Visual theme: Use colors and assets related to [INSERT THEME, e.g., Levy County Schools, Columbia blue and gold, or outer space]. Gameplay mechanics: 1. The player controls a character using [Arrow Keys/Mouse]. 2. After completing a level, the game pauses and asks an educational question. 3. The questions must be about [INSERT CONTENT AREA, e.g., 7th Grade Life Science: Cell Structures]. 4. If the student answers correctly, they advance. If they answer incorrectly, [INSERT PENALTY, e.g., deduct 50 points and show a hint]. Please provide the fully working code."

Step 4: Test and Refine in Canvas Mode

Because you are using Gemini, the AI will generate your game code inside a special workspace on the right side of your screen called Canvas Mode. You don't even need to download anything to test it!

Just click the Preview button at the top right of the Canvas window to instantly play your game. Play it yourself to see how it feels. If it’s too hard, too fast, or the questions aren't quite right, just ask Gemini in the chat to adjust it.

"Make the enemies move 20% slower, and make the questions multiple-choice instead of fill-in-the-blank."

Step 5: Export and Share with Students

Once you are perfectly happy with the game in the Preview window, you can click the download/export icon at the top of the Canvas window to save it to your computer as an .html file.

You can then upload this single file directly to your Learning Management System (like Canvas LMS or Google Classroom) so your students can click it, play, and learn!