Gamiverses

Below are the common Charms (types of products) you’ll find in this Faction. Visit their pages for details about what they are and what is inside once purchased.

• Board Game
• Video Game
• One Button Game
• One Paper Game
• Classroom Game
• Hybrid Game
• Peerful Game
• (Board)game Book

Yes!

Before starting this online store, we designed and published free board games for 10 years at Pandaqi (Games). We vowed to keep a clear separation between that old website and this store, and keeping free games, well, free. You can find some 100 professional board games there, and we hope to always keep it that way.

Education should be free for all. We only sell paid games here because, surprisingly, we need a bit of money to survive. But whenever the budget allows, we make older products free, so keep an eye out for games you like but can’t afford right now.

Please note that many of the Pandaqi games are older work and made as a hobby. They will not necessarily be the same quality as the games we sell here, nor were they made with education in mind. Also note that Pandaqi contains a large number of video games too.

The advantage of board games is that customization is ridiculously easy, perhaps even expected. You can leave components out of the game. You can change them. You can invent your own rules. You can print something twice if you run out. We often provide multiple versions (such as color versus grayscale) to pick the one that suits you most.

With video games, this is much harder. But we tried our best anyway! Our video games usually have a settings screen that allows tweaking many things.

If you want more customization, you can contact us. We can’t make any promises, but if it’s a reasonable request we’ll update the game for everyone with this addition.

We have some overall principles that govern that types of games we make here.

In general,

• Level 1 games are cooperative and simultaneous. This means that you win/lose together, and that you take turns at the same time. It reduces game duration to something palatable to young kids, it removes any tension from winning/losing/waiting your turn, and it fosters collaboration and being proactive.
• Level 2 games are cooperative still, but can be turn-based. Longer and more strategic games are possible, but we don’t lose the social and collaborative aspect. We can’t state often enough the importance of the social part of games and spending time as a parent/teacher with the child.
• Level 3(+) games can be anything, including competitive, one-against-many, real-time games, etcetera. Around this stage is where you’ll also find our unique classroom games and other “game experiences” (rather than more standard “board games”).

There are plenty exceptions to this, of course. Some games just do not work with these constraints. But with every new idea, we try to cleverly twist it into this mold first.

I have always loved learning, but hated education. I’ve researched how people actually learn all my life, literally since I was a boy, and came away with a few certain conclusions. One of them is that playing games = learning. Absolutely. No questions about it. Moving on. (I have actually written countless articles on this if you want details, both on this website, my Pandaqi blog, and my personal blog.)

I wrote educational stories, such as The Saga of Life. I wrote literal educational tutorials/courses on Pandaqi Tutorials.

With every project I did, however, every study I read, everything I experienced, I kept coming back to the holy grail of learning. Reading is inefficient and often not fun. Sitting in class and letting the teacher waffle on about something is incredibly inefficient. All the things I tried, all the things schools are doing, simply paled in comparison to the effectiveness and pleasure of well-designed board games.

And so I started developing an entire curriculum of board games. Literally a school curriculum where every important topic or skill is handled through a board game.

This project became known as “Explorers of the Fun Frontier”. I had intended to launch it as its own website, but plans change, this online store was created, and it seamlessly slotted into it. You might still find traces of the words “fun frontier” in my writing ;)

Download these games, print them, play them with your children or pupils. Watch them have fun while actually learning.

However you like! Share them with an entire class. Prepare one as a surprise gift. Customize it for your kid.

You don’t need a special license or permission for anything. You bought the experience—it’s yours to experience it as you wish.

We are purposely not like most video game companies these days, which force you to always be online and use their shoddy launcher. All because they’re very afraid someone might put one purchased copy of the game on … gasp … two computers. Or something like that. Our video games have no connection with the internet and no restrictions at all on how they are used.