My daughter has just started 3rd grade. All last year, we were dreading this moment. Her 2nd grade teacher had warned us that the workload would be much higher in 3rd grade and we were already struggling to keep up with just math in 2nd grade!

Midway through the 2nd week, and she’s already had 2 quizzes and 1 test. We have tutoring for math but we’ve been handling the other subjects. For her science test, my wife made a game by cutting out different tools and putting answers on flash cards that my daughter could then use to ‘fill in’ the chart. She ended up getting a 90 on that test! It got me thinking that our family issues with focus in general (wife and I as well as her are diagnosed ADHD) that maybe I should work with that and not against it.

I started thinking about my daughter and how well she does when she takes the pressure off of herself and I wanted to find a fun yet educational way that she can learn, play, and gain self confidence. I knew that, as a family of gamers, that making some kind of interactive experience/game study guide was going to bear the most fruit.

I got to sketching and thinking (and hyper-focusing, lets be honest) and I’ve come up with the following thoughts:

I’m going to use Phaser to build a study guide/game that has mechanics inspired by free to play games with a battle pass! Its name will be Luna Learns.

What does that mean? Well… here are my notes:

The general idea centers around repetition, encouragement, and setting/attaining goals. Based on the information she is learning at the time, I have come up with ~6 different game formats to study. Things such as word search or crossword for vocabulary, flash cards for math facts, and identifying parts of a text prompt for reading.

There will be daily and weekly challenges as well as each game having its own rewards for successfully completing a playthrough. Rewards come in the form of experience points that go towards your level for that ‘season’. As she ‘levels up’ in the season, she will earn tickets as well as unlock pages of ‘rewards’ she can claim. The rewards are small things, such as a movie day or going out for ice cream as well as some bigger ‘prizes’ that include robux or minecoins.

There’s a lot I still have to work out re: the point system and balancing but I would like to get some kind of game together first before I start to think through how to score the game.

Speaking of games, here’s the current rundown. I will have posts later going more into detail but an overview:

• Word search

• Crossword puzzle

• Flash Cards

• Match Battle

  • a game where the cpu ‘asks questions’ and the player must match the correct answer and they move forward a space. Incorrect answers will cause the cpu to move forward. There are 5 spaces total and the first to push the other off, wins.

• Prompt & Identify

  • Show a text prompt or an article as well as a list of items you must identify. Things such as:

    • Controlling Main Idea

    • Point

    • Topic

• Bomb Diffuser

  • A matching game where answers and questions are linked together in a random/incorrect order. A timer will count up and the player must figure out which cables are wrong and which are right, setting the wrong ones right before being able to ‘diffuse’ the bomb. Based on how quickly they are able to answer, they have the opportunity to receive a bronze, silver, or gold medal along with extra points

I’m hoping that with this kind of system in place, I can continue to add (and remove) modules and study guides while still trying to keep the general gameplay exciting.

Moving forward, I’d like to start building out some phaser elements. I have a wealth of assets available to me with my many attempts to build games in the past so I have settled on a fun ‘space’ theme. I’d like to get a working prototype of a single game complete soon. My plan is to continue to update this blog on my progress so check back!