Kickstarter

The What and The Why

Problemscape is a series of role playing games (RPGs) or adventure games (depending on how you’d like to classify it) set in an immersive virtual world to help middle or high school students with pre-algebra, algebra, and geometry.

Why Math and Why RPG?

According to the Nation’s Report Card only about a third of 8th graders of over 3.6 million, scored at the Proficient or above level in Math in 2011.

A large percentage of students think that math is difficult, boring, and irrelevant to their lives. The Raytheon U.S. Middle School Students Math Habits Study found that 61% of the students prefer to take out the trash to doing their math homework.

According to the independent Pew Research Center’s 2008 report on video game play, 97% of American teenagers play video games.

What we would like to do is to take the genre of video games that teenagers find very appealing (action/adventure and role playing) and adapt it to create a fun and engaging learning experience for a subject that many find hard and boring.

About the Game

Problemscape is a role playing game (RPG) that takes a problem-based approach to teaching math. In the first game of the series which is for Algebra, students enter the virtual world of Arithma which is inhabited by Arithmen. Arithmen are small cute creatures – they are green when they are happy, orange when they are not, and can change to any color for a short period of time. And they love to play paintball ... with a mathematical twist! 

Main story:

Two years ago, the Arithmen lived under the guidance of a group of mathematicians known as the Xperts. But one day, the Xperts were kidnapped by the ruthless neighboring nation of Literia. And the Arithmen let their city fall apart. The player is a journalist who enters the city to do a story but ends up helping the Arithmen solve their problems. He learns the whole story and decides to help the Arithmen by rescuing the Xperts. As the final quest, the player needs to go through a Literian dungeon with traps and puzzles where the Xperts are held prisoners. The player frees the Xperts and leaves Arithma. She is welcome to return any time to play paint ball or help more Arithmen out.

Problemscape will be a cross platform game playable on Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.

Who are we?
I am Vidya Raman, the founder of Rounded Curriculum Works. I have many years of experience developing educational games. I have a master's degree in Learning, Design, and Technology from Stanford University and have developed games for the websites of Children’s Discovery Museum in San Jose, Lawrence Hall of Science, UC Berkeley, and the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose.

My focus is on curriculum development and game design and my goal is to turn a gaming environment into an effective learning environment and still keep it engaging to teenagers. I want to make sure that the game is grounded in research, stays close to core content standards, and does not turn out to be an animated version of a text book. I plan to share all the research I do through my blog.

I also have a couple of serious gamers in my design team – they are the RPG experts and tell me what will work and more importantly what wouldn’t. 

We use a top-notch offshore game development company to do the things that we ourselves can't do or do fast enough.

And we need you Kickstarters! We are working on our own time, but we need to pay the people who are helping with the development. We are asking for $10,000 to help us with the first phase of the project – to create the 3d assets, interface elements and parts of the city for a prototype. Our goal is to have a working prototype with one level ready for demo at the annual NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) conference in April 2013.

Why should you help?

You mean, other than for the satisfaction of helping create a cool RPG that also helps students get better at math?

For $10: We will send all contributors a thank you card with a personal heartfelt thank you message. If you like, we'll also give you a free copy of our speed math game for iphones or ipads that we developed as a warm up to this project.

For $15: You'll get the $10 rewards plus a jotter made with recycled material

For $25: You'll get the $15 rewards and also get an all natural jute tote bag.

For $50:  You'll get the $25 rewards and your name will go in the game credits and on our website as an early supporter of the project.

For $75: You'll get the $50 rewards + a desk calendar that says 'Thank you for helping create a next generation learning game' goes into the pile of goodies

For $100: You'll get the $50 rewards +

• an organic cotton logo t-shirt
• a set of 3 wallpapers of the game art that has the message: I helped create a next generation learning game.

For $200: You'll get the $100 rewards +

• a heavyweight pullover cotton hoodie
• a pdf of the game art.

For $500: You'll get the $200 rewards +

• a book of the game art 
• get listed as an executive producer of the game in our website and the game credits.

For $1000: All of the $500 rewards and you can be an Xpert in the game. The city of Arithma will have statues of Xperts that will give timely help/advice to the player on gameplay or the math. The Xpert will be made in your image and given a name of your choosing (with some restrictions, naturally). There will be 2 Xperts in the prototype.

From $2 up: If you don't care much for the rewards but are just a kind philanthropist who only wants to see this game developed, please contribute whatever you can. You will still get a thank you card from us whether you like it or not.

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Rewards Update

In response to requests from some of the backers, I would like to add that a download of the prototype and the game when it is finished, will be available to all backers of the projects. 

A big thanks to all our supporters! Please do keep spreading the word!

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How can you help?

Give us the moolah of course :) But even if you can't contribute dollars, we would greatly appreciate it if you can spread the word and share this project with your friends and family!

If you are a games/puzzles/math enthusiast and if you get any ideas for a puzzle that can be used on the lock of the gate to the city of Arithma, send it to us. If we use your idea, we'll credit you in the game as the puzzle creator. Just remember ... the game is for algebra and the puzzle has to be, well, algebra related. And also, you probably know this already - it shouldn't be someone else's intellectual property.

Thank you so much for visiting this page.