Progress

I am excited to say that I believe that Riddles and Wonder is as close to ready as it will ever be. The beta test with my sister’s children went over surprisingly well, and they are younger than the intended age group. Even though the math problems were a little bit difficult, they still kept trying and wanted to keep my beta format. Ava, the older of the two, ended up playing the game on her own for a bit. I asked her why, and she just kept saying “I want to keep trying to make more money!” So, for her, it was about the shiny coins and trying to figure out problems, but it was really amazing to watch her light up and not see it as just math problems.

There was a note that my sister, the teacher, made and that was “This needs to look more professional, laminated maybe. Also, will I be able to increase the level of difficulty for my students if I wanted to? Say, I find that there are too many penny questions and not enough nickel or quarter ones, could we increase that?” Of course I could increase that, and I could make it so that it was less difficult by adding more penny spaces.

Another question she asked was about length of game play. If she could increase it, how would she. The response for that was simple “Increase the amount of money you want your kids or students to earn in the game, or decrease it so that it gets them to the ‘dragon’ quicker.”

We also discussed about increasing the difficulty through other forms of math (decimal places, multiplication, division, etc) and she mentioned about doing different levels of the game for other classes.

I believe that having my sister, the teacher, around has greatly improved what I can do with this game and how to help it move along. Not only has this given me a better sense of where I should be, but where this game could be going. Now, all I really need to do is get this thing to Staples and have 2 days where it gets laminated and put on a special board. Maybe one day I will have special figurines to go with it instead of Wal Mart farm animals, but for now, it will suffice.