What Makes a Game Attractive?

Some games, when they appear, immediately become extremely popular. One example is Wordle,  an online game that captured the internet in January 2022. What makes it so attractive? Dan Meyer asked his colleagues about the most inspiring aspects of the game, and shared their answers in a post. He concluded his post by suggesting that educational games should share these aspects too.

Reading Dan’s post, I was excited to realize that our online games share most of these aspects! Let me use one of our games, Treasure Hunt, as an illustration.

A simple question

Learning the rules of Wordle takes practically no time: one has 6 attempts to guess a five-letter word. Each attempt must be a valid five-letter word. After each attempt the player gets instant feedback: which of the letters in the attempt belong to the target word and whether they are in the right spot.

Learning how to play Treasure Hunt is easy as well: so far, every five year old who tried figured out how to play without an adult’s help. There are several frames in a row, each hiding a number:

Clicking on a frame reveals this number. The goal is to help the character determine which frame hides the target number using as few guesses as possible.

An unsuccessful attempt is part of playing

In Wordle, the player initially has no idea what the target word is and starts with a pure guess. In Treasure Hunt, there are levels where  one number is revealed at the beginning of a round. In other levels, there are no numbers revealed, and the player has no way of knowing which frame hides the target number. In such a case, the first attempt has to be a pure guess:

Unlike in a math problem, in this game it is clear that the first attempt to reveal the target number can be successful by pure chance only. Realizing this fact, we hope, reduces the player’s fear of a mistake.

In higher levels of the game, the numbers in the frames are not consecutive. The player might need to use at least another attempt to determine the gap between the numbers in the neighboring frames.

A guess, if it does not reveal the target number, still results in useful information: revealing some other number. The next attempt will tell more. In fact, an unsuccessful attempt is more part of the solving process than a failure.

Multiple paths to success

A Wordle player will soon discover that some words provide more information than others. For the initial guess the player might use a word that contains many vowels, such as AUDIO. Alternatively, the player might decide to use a word that contains frequent letters, such as SLICE. Very few serious Wordle players use a word with repeating letters, such as VIVID, as their initial guess.

A Treasure Hunt player might decide to use the middle frame as the first guess. Then, comparing the revealed and the target numbers, the player will count up or down from the revealed number. Another player might choose to start with the leftmost frame because from there one would always count up and not down to the target number, and counting up is easier. Further levels allow more strategies.

It can be social!

For many players, the possibility to share a game results “across time and space” is very attractive. Wordle is designed to let a player share some of the solution process without sharing the secret word, and also Wordle players seem to especially enjoy comparing their starting words.

In mathematics, discussing strategies is invaluable. The Treasure Hunt game contains an element of chance but also allows a player to use various strategies. While this is not facilitated by the game itself,  Treasure Hunt players can compare strategies in a non-competitive, even in a collaborative manner, thus enjoying the social aspect of mathematics.

Taking it further

Playing Wordle can help a player notice which letters and groups of letters are more frequent as well as learn new words. Similarly, a young Treasure Hunt player will have an opportunity to notice (and share) some useful patterns in numbers.

And what would make a game attractive to you and to your children? Share your ideas in the  comments!