Art, music, puzzles, patterns, construction, etc, there is math for every taste. Explore the huge range of non-competitive and non-game math activities. You and your kids should expect to have to try them several times before figuring everything out. To set expectations, I should be clear that the challenges in LotL are considerably more difficult than Prodigy. There are comics panels for the story, but kids can click on them to have the story read out. Lure of the Labyrinth doesn't require reading. This is a math "game" that I will never show to the three J's and I suggest you avoid it. Imagine what damage that could do for a kid who thinks this is a good representation of what math is!ĭon't even get me started about the name "prodigy." Did the name bias me against the game from the start? Maybe, but I felt that my enthusiasm for games and the promised theme were stronger biases, so I still feel I gave the product a good chance. I literally found myself forming an active dislike of the material. The questions had no context, no conceptual framework, were tedious. Unfortunately, the material included is pure drill, and even includes a lot that is really recall rather than skills practice. The same format could be used for spelling, history, driver's ed, etc questions just as easily as math. 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.
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.