7 | LGG | MATHPHOBIA
7 | LGG | MATHPHOBIA
by: Leon Lin
Progress:
- I reached the end of this game in around 50 minutes.
Engagement with Horror Genre:
- This was another game that was mainly Halloween themed rather than horror themed. In terms of audience, I felt like this story was more intended for a younger audience (based on the choice of character and the “edutainment” nature of the game). In terms of “mathphobia,” it feels like the goal of the narrative is to make math more approachable to math-learners who aren’t having a good time with it. For context, I would describe myself as math-neutral. It wasn’t something that I enjoyed, but I didn’t struggle with it either, so it doesn’t have much emotional weight for me. But I know for a lot of people it can be a very intimidating subject, so maybe something like this would’ve helped with that!
Things I Appreciated:
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I thought the game was very cleanly edited and presented. There was effort put toward making sure the math problems made sense as in-universe problems, rather than being completely abstract.
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I thought the difficulty of the math problems fit a natural progression and ramped up in a way that felt fair, and I also thought it was nice that a variety of problem types were included. It’s also very forgiving, in that if you make an error, you can just try again.
Miscellaneous Comments:
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As a, well, demon apologist, I was very annoyed that all the other Halloween monsters got to be chill and the demons/archfiend were still irredeemably evil. Boo, tomato, tomato! (I’m mostly joking…)
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I think it would be helpful at the outset to instruct the player to have pencil and paper ready for this game. After a while, some of the arithmetic involved is slightly more involved to where writing it out was necessary for me.
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This is sort of an odd comment, but I felt like the narrative of the game was in tension with the purpose of the game. Like ordinarily here, my advice would be that the narrative felt repetitive and could be significantly streamlined. But the purpose of the game is (I’m assuming?) to get the player to practice arithmetic, in which case repetition is essential to develop the skill. In that sense, I can say that the narrative does a good job managing that tension, but as an adult player I did get tired of it.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
- I think this is the first time I’ve played an IF game that felt explicitly educational? I thought it was a good illustration of how choice-based narratives can be used in that context. I am not really able to evaluate whether the target audience would like this game, but I’d like to think that if I received something like this as someone learning math, I would find it fun!
Memorable Moment:
- When I realized that I needed to look for a multiplication term that equalled zero in order to progress a late puzzle.