What does it take to make an engaging educational game–one that kids want to take outside the classroom and show their family and friends?

With basic tips out of the way in Part 1, we will now take a deeper look at some approaches to educational game design that strike a good balance between teaching and recreation.

Narrative interaction is best met with an established host or playable character

The player may lose interest if the characters involved aren’t interesting or inspiring. This helps put the game’s theme into context and establishes a connection with the real world situations. If you are making a game about mathematics, perhaps the host could be Albert Einstein and while he’s a genius at physics, he needs your help with some produce calculations at the supermarket.

This doesn’t mean that all game hosts need to be inspired by reality. It could be more fun to create an original character and world to frame your curriculum in a fun theme. How about Monster Math with Frank Einstein?

In the highly-successful mobile title Math Land: Addition Games for kids, players help the junior pirate Ray find gold and solve puzzles in a island treasure-themed quest. The simple narrative and broad scale of challenges actually allow this title to target players from ages 5 into adulthood.

Carefully manage your intimidation factor

In a world of countless enemies and difficult bosses, It is imperative that you design challenges that don’t pile on intimidation and stress. The purpose of an educational game is to offer some interactive enjoyment into learning, not put those struggling to learn new material into an intense battle royale.

For a game that pits players up against armies of the darkness, 10Tons Ltd’s Spellspire does an excellent job of making those enemies secondary to the the the challenge of spelling. With a friendly art style and fun comical attacks, going up against a mythical titan feels more like an opportunity than a challenge.

In the instance of young children’s games, it’s best to tone down opponent’s intimidating appearance as much as possible, or to avoid the idea of evil enemies altogether. Players don’t need to fight and defeat enemies to be a hero. Allow the player to work together with various non-playable game characters (perhaps with them offering clues or assistance), and try tackling challenges that are environmental, rather than confrontational. The design of enemies and challenges in the game shouldn’t spark reluctance, but should tempt them to explore the world, and their abilities, more.

Instill and reinforce confidence in the player’s abilities

In Part 1, we talked about correctly conveying Positive and Negative feedback to clearly communicate to the player when they are doing something right versus something wrong. Let’s take that a step further here and offer up some words of encouragement while they play, encouraging them to keep at it, and retain them for longer play sessions, or until they finish a curriculum goal.

It is important to occasionally offer words of encouragement when a player faces challenges, especially when they get stuck or fail. Boosting player confidence ramps up that drive to continue and helps reduce intimidation and stress. These encouraging statements can also offer hints or reinforce skill sets that may be applicable.

Some examples of these encouraging statements:

• Upon encountering an engineering problem: “This one should be easy! We learned about levers before.”
• Upon getting a few steps in the challenge right: “Awesome! You are building the perfect machine.”
• When the challenge is almost complete: “Just one more piece to go. You got this!”
• Upon solving the problem, and encouraging them to master it: “You did it! Another problem out of the way, but do you think you can do it in under 2 minutes for the Engineer Master Badge?”
• Upon failing: “It may be tough, but I know you can do this! Let’s try again…and remember, the solution requires levers to work.”

Choose your art and color styles carefully

The visual design of your game can often be overlooked when you’re focusing too much on the material, as educational games often do. You want to make sure that your game has lots of bright and stimulating elements to capture the attention of your viewer, but at the same time, to not overwhelm your audience with distractions.

At the same time, it’s important to design for your demographic. For younger kids, you want those cartoon-like characters and bright bold colors. Will that work for more mature crowds? Maybe not so much. Mindsnacks does a great job at having bouncy animated animal characters while having a minimalistic style that also appeals to adults.

The subject matter is also important. Will a conservation learning app be less effective if the art style shows unrealistic depictions of plant and animal life? Can you guide your users through history effectively in a modern-looking app with laser theming? For a language-learning app – would it feel more engaging to use an art style that represents the target language culture?

We aren’t saying play it safe by seeking out cautious designs that may bore audiences, but rather take intelligent choices while considering what audiences you want to target, and how you want them to feel when playing the game.

Don’t ignore the teacher

Making educational games often contain a mechanic of questioning and answering. If there is a classroom full of kids all simultaneously playing the same game, it would be the perfect time to give the teacher the ability to interject or proctor the gameplay. Facicilating or even promoting teacher involvement could help your app become a staple in the classroom.

Perhaps if the class is struggling with a question, you could have the teacher tap into the game to offer some hints or suggestions. Additionally, you could also give that teacher the ability to go back and answer a question for the students so it can be used as an example or an explanation.

While a teacher’s guide is advisable, a teacher control panel is one of the most powerful tools in e-learning. With a separate login into a web portal or the same app, the teacher could be given access to a student’s individual scores and progress, create and manage teams, set game rules and structures, and even add in custom curriculum (such as vocabulary).

Workinman Interactive Educational Game Development

With over a decade of game design and development experience, our design teams have the knowledge and tools to produce attractive, engaging games to meet your goals. With artists talented in a wide variety of styles, and a knack for charming animations, we can create a style that students will love. Our engineers can craft an engine to run on any platform of your choosing, seamlessly integrating with your back end, or design a custom portal to fit your needs. Let’s talk and start making more engaging educational games today!