This mechanic forces \math questions into the game play, but doesn't create any relationship relate to anything else about the game. That's right, doing math in this game is a cost that you have to pay! During each magic duel, we are forced to answer a math question as the hurdle to casting a spell successfully.
There is no math integration with game and theme. Second, the vast majority of items you can collect or buy are only available for paid users. First, we don't have a counter to keep track of how much gold we've collected, so it becomes hard to pay attention to that. However, they all have exactly the same in-game effects, so we never have a reason to care about the extra spells (though we do have to waste time and clicks choosing one each time).įinally, they make two mistakes with the loot. Also, the way we gain experience is dueling random forest creatures, an activity that quickly seems pretty uninteresting and unmotivated (the forest creatures are just hanging out, they aren't bad/evil or doing anything wrong per se).įor each new spell, there is a cute animation showing the effects of that spell. More experience feels like it makes the game less fun. Gaining experience gives us extra hearts (capacity to take damage in magical duels), but this just makes the inserted mini-math quizzes longer. There is limited opportunity or in-game reason to explore the world. Most game play is driven by railroaded mini-storylines where we follow a guiding pointer along a linear path to retread locations we've seen before. Unfortunately, each of these turns to disappointment. We are going to explore a new world, gain experience, learn new spells, rather loot.
I think one reason I was so disappointed is that the premise starts out rather promising. It is much better than the huge crowd of flash animated drill and kill games. The standard is well below a popular commercial/non-education game, but I would say their work here is only slightly below the cutting edge in edtech products. Look and feel/animation: pretty good, clearly another area they prioritized.This functionality seemed on par with other edtech products I've used. Decent reports about student activity and teacher ability to pick focus questions (assignments) is nice. Teacher back-end: this is where they put in their effort.There are some aspects that reflect this: In case you don't want to bother to read her post, passing grade is 3/3.Ĭlearly, the team has spent a lot of time and effort on development. So Prodigy Game score 1/3 against Tracy's Big 3. Mistakes handled productively: no (PG fails this hurdle).Conceptual basis: none (PG fails this hurdle).Time pressure: none (Prodigy Game passes this hurdle).Top 3 non-negotiable criteria, from this post: What could be better? I spent a couple hours going through it and came away very disappointed. The background sounded great: play, math, monsters, magic, adventure. Once you read it, you'll be surprised that the idea ever occurred to you.Ī good friend and fellow PROMYS supporter recently asked me to take a look at an online math game: Prodigy. Upfront, I guess I'll reveal that I'm not being paid or otherwise sponsored to write this review.