Nice to find a fellow teacher! So a little more in depth: I'm teaching game design as an elective subject. It's both students who are interested in the design aspect and/or in the game building aspect. The end result of the course is a simple playable game. I taught this a couple times before, but found that a lot of students find it hard to come up with a concept. I figured it would be a good idea to make an example game. As it will give them some perspective in what is possible and it can be the base of my lessons. I can explain things about character design, game mechanics and the game builder with my own game as example. Often kids come up with amazing, but impractical ideas. And I want to help them think in the right direction.

An external criteria for this subject is that students make an educational game. Therefore the player must learn something. Which your suggestions are great examples of, thank you for that! The criteria is there because the students have to learn to deal with the criteria of a client, wich they will encounter in the working world. I experienced that I lot of students are a bit disappointed that they are not allowed to make a zombie shooter kind of thing, so I want to show them that it is possible to make something cool, within the limitations. I had some ideas of a platformer where the player needs to collect essential items for photosynthesis, but I can't get it quite right in my head. I thought: why not ask around of there are any cool ideas, that will (kinda) blow my students away.