Puzzle Game

There are already some pretty amazing puzzle games out there, training all sorts of skills. So, what fresh ideas do our games bring to the table?

• We are focused on making puzzles even more accessible and available to even younger/more audiences. Our games will often only require a single tap to take your turn. They won’t require numbers or text to understand or play. Simpler, more streamlined, more focused on a single educational goal.
• We are focused on a specific educational topic. This leads to more rare and creative puzzle designs, because we’re “not allowed” to add all sorts of extra rules that would muddy the educational waters. With these constraints, each puzzle becomes unique.
• We are focused on making non-predatory games for all platforms. The puzzle game market is dominated by mobile games showing ads to kids or selling their data. We hate that. Our games are completely offline, in your control, and just present the best possible puzzle we have, playable on any device/with any input method.
• We are experts in random generation. In other words, we know how to write algorithms that can invent new puzzles forever. This means you never run out—you never “completed the game” and now it has become useless if you want to practice further.

Most of our puzzle games have 5 difficulty levels. Once you can comfortably solve a level, you can start doing puzzles from the next level. Each level usually adds only a single new “rule” or “twist” to challenge you again in new ways.

Below are some of the biggest advantages of puzzle games.

• Everyone loves puzzles. Humans were made to problem solve. We feel very satisfied and rewarded when we do solve that problem.
• Puzzles are probably the most efficient way to be motivated to problem solve and get that reward. They’re tiny, self-contained, with simple rules and a very reachable objective.
• We learn through problem solving. Puzzles are great at teaching and strengthening the specific skills needed for it.
• Even better, puzzles help learn critically. The best puzzles make the puzzler realize, by themselves, that their previous understanding was wrong or lacking. Because they can’t solve this next puzzle with their previous understanding of the topic, so they have to update it. They have to learn and grow. Which is much stronger than someone telling them they must learn something.
• Connected to that, children can play these puzzles on their own. Nobody needs to be around looking over their shoulder. They know if they’ve done it correctly themselves, and there are no fixed answers they can sneakily search on Google.
• Digital puzzles have some advantages over physical ones too. They take away any busywork or rules—you don’t need to learn them, the computer does it for you! It allows cool puzzles that would be impossible with pen and paper. It can generate endless new puzzles to keep practicing for as long as you want.

Below are some of the common disadvantages of education through puzzles.

• It’s still a digital game that you play by sitting behind a screen. Research clearly shows that too much screen time is terrible for the development of (young) children.
• Puzzles are more tightly focused on one specific skill (and nothing else) than, say, games or social experiences. This means you don’t really learn a larger set of related skills by playing them.
• Similarly, puzzles are a bit less flashy and appealing than complete games, especially if a kid is not a fan of doing activities alone. (It is, of course, still more appealing than reading text on paper. And the fact you do the puzzles alone might be a big advantage in the eyes of other kids.)
• Everyone has different devices, different screens, and technology keeps evolving. We try our best, but digital games might break or fail in certain cases!

You always get a ZIP file. When extracted, it contains folders for each different platform, each of which contains the game file to execute.

• Windows: double-click the .exe file.
• Mac: unzip it and double-click the .app file. Apple will probably block the app initially, because it’s not from a “trusted source” (aka their own store). You can allow it through Settings.
• Linux: double-click the .x86_64 file. In some cases you need to make the file “executable” first.
• Web: host the web folder on some server (or start a local server) and visit index.html in the browser.
• Android: copy the .aab file to your device and install it locally.
• Chromebook:
  • Active the Linux subsystem and run the Linux build.
  • OR use the Web version so you can just visit the game in the browser.