''DragonBox'' is an

educational game Educational games are games explicitly designed with educational purposes, or which have incidental or secondary educational value. All types of games may be used in an educational environment, however educational games are games that are design ...

series developed and published by WeWantToKnow AS, a Norwegian studio. DragonBox Algebra was released on May 9, 2012 for

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. It was created to teach children math, such as

algebra Algebra () is one of the areas of mathematics, broad areas of mathematics. Roughly speaking, algebra is the study of mathematical symbols and the rules for manipulating these symbols in formulas; it is a unifying thread of almost all of mathem ...

. The game won a 2016

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award for "Best Learning Game", and received positive reception from critics, who praised the efficacy of the app.

Gameplay

The game has five "worlds" with twenty levels each, and beating each level allows the dragons that the player possesses to grow into a new, more advanced form. To beat each level, the player must play a puzzle minigame in which they organize cards on two trays. While the cards are initially icons of various creatures and objects, the game uses them to abstractly demonstrate mathematical equations before later replacing them with variables and numbers. The player gets bonus stars if they complete the level in as few moves as possible, and with as few cards left as possible.

Development

The co-founder and CEO of the game's studio is Jean-Baptiste Huyhn, a former math teacher who was frustrated with the way math was taught in schools and wanted to teach it in a way that made more sense to children. He started the We Want to Know studio with the goal of making educational games that were actually fun to play. The game was programmed by Zoran Popovic, a computer scientist who also created the video game

Foldit Foldit is an online puzzle video game about protein folding. It is part of an experimental research project developed by the University of Washington, Center for Game Science, in collaboration with the UW Department of Biochemistry. The objective ...

Reception

The game received positive reception from critics, with Jonathan H. Liu of ''

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'' commenting on how his children "loved" the game despite its heavy mathematical focus. He stated that it "makes algebra so fun and easy to learn that my kids fight over who gets to play it". Stephanie Fogel of

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called the game something every developer should study, quoting

Nicholas Fortugno Nicholas Fortugno (born May 13, 1975) is an American game designer and educator. Fortugno is CCO of Playmatics LLC, a New York City-based game development studio focusing on casual games and co-founded with Margaret Wallace. Fortugno is perhaps ...

saying the educational elements are "elegant and hidden, the way good educational games should be". Ann Elliott of Edudemic called the game "intuitive" and user-friendly. Adam Renfro of Getting Smart called the game "a shining example ..of what gamification should look like". Jordan Shapiro in ''

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'' said he was "astonished" at how quickly his son learned

algebraic equation In mathematics, an algebraic equation or polynomial equation is an equation of the form :P = 0 where ''P'' is a polynomial with coefficients in some field, often the field of the rational numbers. For many authors, the term ''algebraic equation ...

s, and was blown away.

References

{{Reflist 2012 video games Android (operating system) games IOS games Mathematical education video games Single-player video games Video games developed in Norway Educational software for macOS