Guidelines for Creating the Balloon Burst Minigame

Balloon Burst enables learners to compare one fixed item or category to up to five other items or categories in some fashion. Balloon Burst is a great game for comparing your product to competitor products.

  • Example: You have Product A and you want to compare it to Products B and C. In every game, the player will always compare Product A to either Product B or Product C. Players will not compare B to C.

For you to use Balloon Burst, you must have created a learning objective that includes a behavior where Balloon Burst is a mini-game option. Use of these verbs within your learning objective means Balloon Burst will be available to you as a mini game option:

  • Compare
  • Contrast
  • Distinguish
  • Identify
  • Match
  • Select

Here’s how to create a game.

Steps to Create a Balloon Burst Game

(NOTE: These steps assume you have already created a game topic and an associated learning objective.)

  1. Expand Develop option within left-hand navigation pane, and select the Create or Edit Mini Games.
  2. Find a topic that uses Balloon Burst as its mini-game and click EDIT.
  3. In the Provide a context section, type a description or context for what your learners will be doing. (For example: Compare Product A to Product B.)
  4. Click SAVE. NOTE: It is critical that you click SAVE whenever you see a SAVE button. You will lose content if you proceed without saving it.
  5. In the field labeled Provide a fixed category and comparator categories, enter a Fixed Category and click SAVE. This is what you’re comparing to all other categories. (For example, your fixed category might be your product. Comparator categories might be the names of your competitors’ products.)
  6. Enter a Comparator Category and click SAVE.
  7. To add another Comparator Category, click ADD NEW COMPETITOR CATEGORY.
  8. Once you’ve added all your competitor categories, click CONTINUE TO GAME STATEMENTS.
  9. Provide statements for your Fixed Category by typing in true statements that are unique to your Fixed Category where it says Placeholder Statement. You do not want any of the statements to apply to anything other than the Fixed Category.
  10. After you enter each statement, click the SAVE button next to it.
  11. To add additional statements, click ADD NEW STATEMENT.
  12. Repeat steps 9-11 for each of your Comparator Categories. The same requirement for your content applies here: the content you include must be unique to the category for which you are creating it.
  13. When you finish adding content, preview what your game by clicking PREVIEW GAME at the bottom left of your screen.

Click through the slideshow below to see the steps in action.

Best Practices

The best games will have sufficient unique content to create multiple play-throughs that let players see some new content on each play-through. Optimally, each category should have at least five statements associated with it so repeat game play ensures players see a mix of statements each time and not the exact same ones repeatedly.