The Gamiverse Levels Overview

Normally, when I create a project, I write a “design bible”. A short list of rules and guidelines for all parts of the project, to make sure they are consistent and cohesive.

With this project, though, that obviously didn’t work! This store creates games for any age. And it creates many other types of activities too. It starts at a level where most kids aren’t able to read or count at all, and continues until you get complex board games that require these skills to be present in players.

As such, the project is split into levels. These roughly correspond to an age range, but I explicitly didn’t call them that. Because age obviously doesn’t say anything about your skill. Some kids learn reading earlier than others, some kids can do math earlier than others.

This article discusses the “guidelines” I settled on for every level, and why. It doesn’t discuss the specifics of what’s being taught per topic (e.g. “math: children now learn about division”). This is a much larger list and always in flux, so you can check the latest specific games and “lessons” on the website itself.

Level 1: First Voyage

The general age range here is 2–4.

The requirements are …

• No text or numbers. (These games teach those symbols, but not require you already know them.)
• Very thematic games. (Nothing abstract or themeless; everything is directly based on something kids will now from real life.)
• Cooperative. (Everyone wins together.)
• Simultaneous turns. (You don’t have to wait your turn or do things in sequence.)
• Completely open information. (All material is just open on the table, all players have equal information.)
• No pressure on speed or preciseness. (Such as a timer on your turns.)
• Short game loops or feedback loops. (This is good in general, but especially with more impatient gamers ;))
• Nothing that requires fine motor skills. (Most “actions”, in fact, are physical and require moving your whole body around.)
• The rules are so simple that the games don’t necessarily need a rulebook. (Also, prefer story over rules. Make the game tell a story in which the rules just … automatically make sense.)
• There is a high degree of randomization. This keeps the challenge of the game varied and reduces rules or setup to remember. In fact, these are barely games, as there is only a very low number of individual decisions.
• The objective of the game must be something concrete or event driven. (Rather “first to cross the finish line” than “get more victory points than others”.)
  • In many ways, children will play a game just to enjoy taking part in a story and doing the action itself, and perhaps not even care about some overall goal.
  • Playing a board game should be approached like “structured play time” or just “playing with a toy”.

It was very interesting to brainstorm and experiment with this. To anybody who’s lived on this earth for a while, it seems unfathomable that someone might not know any of this. That someone might have no clue what each number means, and might not even have a clue what a game is and why they need to follow rules to have fun.

As such, a big part of this level is simply getting kids acquainted with games.

And when you look at all the options, the most “friendly” one is cooperative, simultaneous play.

• Kids take part in the game, but aren’t “on their own”.
• Because information is “open”, players can help each other. Because a parent can see their kid’s cards, for example, they can help out.
• Simultaneous games are much faster (by their nature), while everyone is always engaged. So even the most restless kid will not wander or lose focus.

What are common (specific) ways to accomplish this? The checklist below is a nice guide for myself whenever I design a new game.

• OPEN: Either place cards on the table (don’t hold in hand), or fold paper to get material that stands up on its own, or have no individual material but only shared material (in the center of the table).
• SIMULTANEOUS TURNS: Pick/tap a card at the same time, or literally allow doing things whenever (rare but possible), or have one person doing something and everyone else guessing or interacting simultaneously. (That one person will likely be the Parent.)
  • Team play is a subset of this, but less common in level 1.
• COOPERATIVE: Simply play until you meet a common objective (the “always win”), play against the game or a fake opponent (the “all win / all lose”), play until the game ends and check your score (the “try to do better than last time”)
• RANDOMIZATION: Randomly throw facedown tiles on the table (“rolling a die” = “pick one tile and see what it is”), or shuffle material and draw a random one, or let the real environment determine properties (“if it’s Monday, do this”)
  • I used to think randomization was impossible with just printed material, but fortunately I recently did some projects where I found many ways to make it happen.
• THEME/NATURE: The skills below are things children naturally have (thanks to evolution/genes), and are thus a simple core for a game or a good skill to use.
  • FOOD/DRINK/SLEEP: Children know they need to get it and the basics of how it works. They might know different types of food, or that you can “spill” a drink.
  • MOVEMENT: Children can obviously move around and are interested in doing so.
  • AIM: Throwing stuff or targeting stuff is something very natural to humans, even from a young age.
  • SHELTER/DEFEND: The need for safety and for defending what’s important is similarly natural. The idea of a home/safe bed/cage (for animals) is important to children, and an easy theme for a game is e.g. a monster that threatens something they need (so they need to defend it).

Similarly, it’s much easier to teach people very thematic games. I don’t understand why many schools “gamify” lessons by introducing these extremely abstract and superficial number games. It doesn’t mean anything to a child (yet), whereas you could tap into the many experiences the child will likely have already had.

For example,

• You could make a game about counting dots on a card, or any other abstract shape and objective. It would be fine, but a bit lifeless and like shooting yourself in the foot.
• Instead, you could make it thematic! Have animals on the card and tell the player to build their own zoo, but it only has space for 10 animals at most. Kids know animals, they like animals, they understand they take up space. Or you could do it about stuffing a backpack, or filling a paper cup that’s not allowed to overflow, anything a child might know from real life.

When I say “short feedback loops”, I mean that you immediately get a reward (or not) for your action. You do something and immediately know if it’s good or not. Or, at the very least, there is immediate change. This might sound obvious, but there are plenty board games where you’re making moves for 30 minutes before the game has a mechanic/rule that lets you know if you did something right. It’s an easy design trap to fall into as a game designer, and one to avoid for sure.

Finally, humans are physical beings, and kids prove that every second of every day. Games in this level don’t make you “move a pawn” or “play a card”. No, you play by actually moving your whole body, with larger physical movements. And some of those movements can be quite “easy” or “obvious” to adults—but they’re a real challenge to kids at that age.

Level 2: Meeting Stars

The general age range here is 5–6.

The requirements are …

• Simple symbols and numbers are allowed. (Such as single letters from the alphabet and numbers below 10.)
• The games are still thematic, but now moved to slightly more advanced experiences.
• Cooperative, but with subgoals. (Players also have to manage something individual, besides the main goal of the whole group.)
• Turn-based. (Once someone has played a few simultaneous games, and they’re perhaps a bit older, they’re ready to “wait on their turn”.)
• Some secret or personal information allowed, but not much.
• Games can start talking about things outside of basic skills, such as life lessons and society. (But in a very simplified and easy way, of course.)
• Fine motor skills (such as holding a hand of cards) can be trained here, but shouldn’t be relied upon.
• (From about age 5, you can start giving kids “responsibilities”. Such as shuffling and dealing the cards, maybe checking something in the rules.)

This one also introduces a rule that will be true for all upcoming levels.

Only introduce “pressure” on skills from the previous level!

For example, if you play games in this level, you should be comfortable with basic shapes, numbers, letters. That means you can train to be more comfortable and faster with this skill by putting pressure on it. For a very simple example: a game that requires you to put alphabet letters in order on a timer.

In early levels, though, this is of minimal importance. Only when you get really comfortable with many skills does it start to be “fun” (and not overwhelming) to test the skills under some kind of pressure.

Those “subgoals” are important here. I learned this lesson relatively recently, but already know just how valuable it is. What does it mean, exactly?

• In many games, especially cooperative ones, there is a single goal. You either win or you lose.
• This can be a bit disappointing. It’s not true to real life—where almost all tasks are not this black and white—and doesn’t feel fun.
• How do you solve it? By giving players individual (repeated) objectives too.
• For example, maybe you have to run a farm together, but each player is individually responsible for some task or animal. Even if you lose, you can feel good about completing your own objective. Even if the farm ends up in ruins, you can feel good about having fed your pigs well ;)

Finally, this level introduces some solo games. Solitaire board games are becoming more popular and common in general, and I wanted to practice developing them. Mostly, though, I realize not everyone will always be able to find other players, and some kids might simply prefer some alone time. From this level, players should be well-versed in games enough that they can play a few on their own (perhaps even without any oversight) if wanted.

Level 3: Space Battles

The general age range here is 7–8.

The requirements are …

• A solid skill with language and numbers can be expected. (Read and write simple words, count to higher numbers, add and subtract, etcetera.)
• The games can be a bit more abstract, hyper-focused on a topic or strategic idea.
• Competitive games, but with “safeguards”. (You can never be truly out of the game. If you’re in last place, rules will help you stay alive. Most competition is indirect.)
• More “nitty-gritty games” are now possible, which includes secret information, bluffing, acting against one another, etcetera.
• Fine motor skills can be expected, and the games don’t use large physical movements anymore.

Around age 7, in general, kids become interested in more competitive games and deeper strategy. It’s not enough anymore to play a quick simple game with their parents. They want to play against their parents. They want to think completely for themselves, do their own thing, and try to outsmart the other players.

This is, of course, both an advantage and a disadvantage.

• It opens up the types of games they can play. They can be more complex, longer, more challenging.
• It can also lead to situations where kids can’t decouple the game from real life, and might get mad at something that happened in-game, or start picking on someone and only attacking them in the game. (Around this age, certainly not all children are mature enough to overcome this.)

That’s why I decided to use only “indirect competition”. For example, you can’t directly steal someone else’s food. But there might be a “food market”, and you can obviously buy the thing that another player might have wanted (first). You’re clearly competing and interacting, but not in a way that can easily turn mean. Most kids recognize this as “oh I should’ve played smarter/been faster” instead of “oh that is a personal attack”.

Level 4/5: Pretty Planets

The general age ranges here are 9–10 and 11–12

The requirements are …

• There are no restrictions on language and math anymore, other than an effort to keep it as simple as possible. (This is a good idea in general, but for these games I might cut “better ideas” just to keep the numbers/text on cards simpler.)
• Games are still kept short. They carry a general theme that most appeals to children.
• Games can talk about a few more complex issues and be less “subtle” about what system it’s teaching.
• Direct competition is now the standard. (Not a requirement for all games, of course.)
• I’d suggest letting the kids pick most of the games now, instead of deciding for them. Let them follow their interests to keep them engaged and having fun.

This age range is interesting. You see a wide variety of skills in kids, just as you can start to see a wide variety in physical development. Some will be ready for full-blown 2 hour board games, some will surely not be ready for that. It’s a bit of an in-between range, and I decided to play it safe and not make it the final level.

That’s what the first three bullet points were about. Yes, these games can now be anything, but that doesn’t mean they have to be. I’d still prefer to keep them short, simple, colorful, family-oriented.

The biggest difference is, again, that we can now test skills from previous levels under more pressure or in an advanced way. For example, the previous level will have tought math operations. In this level, we can actually ask players to multiply, or divide, in more complicated ways or under time pressure.

Level 6: Galaxy’s Edge

The general age range here is 13+.

Yes, this is the final level and will suit anyone above that age. Be they teens, young adults, or even adults.

Because once you understand the basic concept of (board) games, and you have a good grasp on language and math, then you can play any game. Some might be harder, sure. Some might have a theme that doesn’t interest a certain age group. But they’re all playable for some people in all age ranges.

This project simply contains games about “typical school subjects” in this level. These games can be anything, but they will be a continuation of subjects (such as math, biology, chemistry, history, …) handled in earlier levels. This also means they can become quite complex or hyperfocused on really advanced topics, as long as I find a good way to turn that into a fun game.

If you want any other types of board games, well, I’d refer you to my actual gaming studio website! Pandaqi contains a large number of professional board games that should now be perfectly playable with your kids. They’re all made by me too, which means you know what to expect: interactive and really short rules, free print-n-play, family friendly, with many expansions or variants to modify the game to your group’s needs.