DragonBox Algebra – That’s How to Make an Educational Game!

Imagine a cool, attractive, addictive game, the kind that, as soon as you get into it, you can see right away that it”s a great game. The kind of game in which you will want to finish every stage with three stars, the kind you simply can’t put down.

And imagine that, over the course of the game, almost without realizing it, you’ll learn to solve equations with a single unknown.

Well, that game exists. It’s called DragonBox.

The task at each level is simple. The screen is divided into two parts. In one of them is a wooden box, in which there is a dragon. The player has to get the dragon on its own, that is, isolate it on one side of the screen. The way to do so is to neutralize objects by bringing their “mirror image” (or “night state”) from outside. But with one limitation – whatever you bring onto one side of the screen, you have to bring onto the other side as well.

 The analogy is clear: the wooden box is the x, the unknown, the two parts of the screen are the two sides of the equation, and the aim is to isolate x on one side Nella sezione di William Hill dedicata alle online Slot machine online trovi 32 nuovi titoli, ricchi di bonus e jackpot. of the equation.

Once you have done so, you can move to the next stage, but if you want three stars (and who doesn”t?), you need to:

1. solve the equation;
2. not leave excess cards (by analogy, not leave an expression such as a 5 5-3 3=);
3. do all this in a minimum of moves.

What the game also does is gradually replace the pretty pictures with numbers (initially as playing tiles, and later as actual numbers) and variables. Without the player noticing it, the screen begins to look like this:

DragonBox is a perfect example of an educational game: learning is an integral part of the game, and not just some penalty that you have to pay in order to advance; points are awarded for mathematical outcomes (a neat, partial solution to the equation); and even the correction of errors is done in a cute way (for example, if you leave an extra card in the equation, the Dragon, which is supposed to eat it, instead says “Yuck” to what you have left for it – after all, teachers can’t say “You’re wrong” to a student, but a dragon can say “Yuck” about its food, right). Graphics, music and humor, so characteristic of popular games such as Angry Birds or Cut the Rope, are also part of the game.

DragonBox has two versions: one for ages 5 and up ($6), and a second one for ages 12 and up ($10). It will run on all possible platforms – computers, tablets and smartphones. There is no doubt that the developers know what a great product they have, hence the price tag, which deviates from the customary 99 cents, but which is still much cheaper than a single private lesson in mathematics.

I could go on for hours about the features of this game, but I still have 150 levels to complete with three stars.