The Evolution of Lumen

The Evolution of Lumen

Lumen PhotoVocab Game Officially Launches: A Journey from MFA Thesis to Classroom Tool

I’m thrilled to announce the official launch of Lumen PhotoVocab Game! 🎉

Born out of my MFA thesis project on game-based learning at Jacksonville State University, Lumen was designed to address challenges I faced in my own classroom. Students often struggled to engage during critiques and group discussions, which are such an important part of learning. As a lifelong gamer, I knew that games could be powerful tools for bringing people together and overcoming fear of failure so I decided to design a card game to help.

Lumen went through extensive research, prototyping, and playtesting—including IBR-approved testing in design and photography classes at Jacksonville State University. The response was overwhelmingly positive, which inspired me to bring it to market.

📖 Interested in the research behind Lumen? You can download my paper, “Game-Based Learning: Building Competence in Visual Literacy Through Simulation,” at JSU Digital Commons.

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We’d love to hear from you!

Have you been using Lumen PhotoVocab Game? Your experience matters, and we’d love to know how it’s making an impact in your classroom, photo club, or learning space.

 Share your story by emailing us at: ahoy@blackwaterbucs.com

By sharing your testimonial or photos, you’re not just supporting a small business—you’re helping us further our mission of creating engaging learning solutions for educators and students everywhere. Your feedback inspires us to keep innovating and growing!

Thank you for being part of the Lumen journey! Together, we can make learning fun, interactive, and unforgettable. 

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Shop Our Games

Good News: We’re Extending Lumen’s Launch Special!

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To give educators more time to explore Lumen PhotoVocab Game and to share this innovative resource with their schools, we’re extending the Launch Special through January 31st!

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Lumen isn’t just a game—it’s a powerful teaching tool that:

Enhances visual literacy

Expands photography vocabulary

Sharpens critical thinking skills

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Ideal for classrooms, critiques, and photo clubs, Lumen PhotoVocab Game transforms teaching photography into a fun, interactive, and collaborative experience for students.

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Now through January 31st, get 50% OFF with CODE: BLASTOFF at checkout!

Use this extra time to plan for the new semester and talk to your administrators about adding Lumen to your school’s resources.

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Shop now: Blackwater Shop

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Let’s make 2025 the year of creative and engaging education!  

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Lumen’s final prototype is being assembled!

Our manufacturer, NiceFunnyGames, sent us in-progress photos of Lumen’s final prototype. They reported that all game files have been printed and that Lumen’s samples should be finished in two days. 

This is Lumen’s third official prototype. The differences between it and the second prototype are as follows:

• Updated game logo. The name was changed from ‘Lumen: A Game of Photographic Terminology’ to ‘Lumen PhotoVocab Game’.
• Rewritten and redesigned Player Guide (slightly larger in size).
• Updated game box layout.
• 4 photo cards were swapped out to aid variety.
• Four vocabulary cards were added to make the game an even 400 cards (100 vocabulary cards and 300 photo cards).

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Lumen, Prototype II

Several changes were made to the second version of Lumen to improve the game. More terminology and photo cards were added, the player guide was rewritten, and the game box was redesigned. 

This version of Lumen consists of 96 Terminology cards, 300 Photo cards, and a card-sized 8-page accordion fold player guide.

Samples produced: 7

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2023 was a busy year and Lumen’s Education Edition is close to being published. I’m working on a few final tweaks and am hoping to place the order for its first official production run within the next week.

There’s a lot of news to share since my last blog post–the website has unfortunately taken a back seat so I could focus on the actual game. Now that the game is almost done I’m in the process of building a new website so I won’t waste too much time making updates here but here are a few highlights from this past year.

• Lumen’s name has been updated to Lumen PhotoVocab Game from Lumen: A Game of Photographic Terminology.
• The player guide has been rewritten and is much clearer, and more fun, and the game is now themed around submitting work for a photography exhibition. The gameplay didn’t change. I just realized that it plays just like submitting work to an art show so that was a fun realization.
• I’ve hired various part-time crew to help me get things done. I realized this past year that despite being an amazing one-woman show I cannot do everything myself. Starting a business is a lot of work and there are lots of things to juggle. It’s too overwhelming to try to do it all myself. Shoutout to Karl, Madison, Abbey, and Shankar; and to my game publishing coach Joe Slack, and the many other people helping with various projects.
• Lumen now has a Print-to-Play sampler edition available for purchase in our shop. It’s a smaller version of the game we put together to give people the opportunity to go ahead and get the game in their classrooms and/or to test it out before ordering the actual game.

There’s more but I’ll save the other news for another time since I need to go get back to work on the game. 😅

Thanks for your patience and support!

~Captain Carol

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I had prepped a pretty straight forward introductory talk on game-based learning to be followed by the 30+ attendees getting to play Lumen and experience game-based learning for themselves but I ended up changing my talk a bit at the last minute. The morning presentations leading up to mine were all super heavy so I felt like I needed to transition the mood a bit more for mine. I ended up speaking more about why I’m passionate about game-based learning and why I think game-based learning is needed in this day and age and I could tell that resonated with quite a few people. Yay!

Games have often been thought frivolous but I personally have found them essential for my mental health and great vehicles for experiential learning. When we’re kids we naturally learn by playing and creating games but at a certain point in our development most of us are told we have to stop playing and get serious. Personally, I think that’s horrible advice.

We live in a time where we’re constantly aware of every awful thing happening in the world. We’re overworked, overwhelmed with stress, and often subject to crushing amounts of peer/societal pressure. We need play and joy in our lives now more than ever and games are a great vehicle for that. In an ideal world everyone would know that it’s okay to play and have fun while also being productive but since so many of us have been programmed to believe that it’s not I feel it’s important to give people permission, or at least an opportunity, to play and relax a bit. Technically none of us need permission from anyone else but that doesn’t mean we don’t still desire it. I know I love when people give me an excuse to be silly or playful and I know I’m not alone in that feeling.

My talk went well and people were already jumping into Lumen before I went over how to play so that was very exciting to see. I even got to sit down and play with one table and it was such a delight to see everyone having a great time. It was exactly the kind of reaction I was hoping for and is the reason I love games so much. I got some great feedback afterwards and now feel ALL THE PRESSURE to get this game out ASAP. 😅

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