Many researchers have already unveiled that playing video games is actually helping with the development of the brain. Gamification, the use of game elements in non-game contexts, is a trend used more regularly in everyday life to enhance productivity and learning. Numbala, developed by Neurodio, tries to gamify mathematics catered to those who are just starting out with basic maths. Neurodio claims to have done extensive research to make this a valuable tool to enhance the grasping of counting and basic adding/subtracting.
Not your typical educational game
The main problem with educational games is that they are mostly packed with educational content but lack completely in all other game departments like visuals, gameplay and most importantly… game fun. Numbala did an excellent job to mask the learning experience with a great visual style and matching fun gameplay. My 7-year-old daughter genuinely had fun with this game unbeknownst to her learning a few valuable mathematics concepts in the process.
Side-scrolling math-ness
Numbala tells the story of a coin-spewing cosmic whale and an unnamed girl who’s set to collect as many coins as she can. Numbala is, in essence, a horizontally side-scrolling shooter with simplified controls. You control the ship by using only a slider which controls the altitude of your ship. The screen is divided into nine lanes and the slider controls in which lane you fly. Pressing the right number on the slider, at the right time helps to avoid collisions. Nifty flying skills get you more coins too. Next to the slider is a button to shoot blockades with, and another button to activate collected power-ups.
The coins which are scattered all over the screen have dots on them which represents the lanes they’re in. This mechanic should help with spatial-numerical association just like teachers would explain the concept of numbers through an elevator. Each stage has 3 green colored coins which are harder to reach and demand fast lane-shifting. Collecting these earns the player different airships. Later stages introduce blockades which can be shot and enemy missiles which can either be avoided or shot to pieces if you’re fast enough.
Gameplay feels stale after long stretches
The first part of the game introduces the basics and is almost entirely limited to recognizing the number. Later stages start introducing simple sums and subtraction. Sadly, you need to play through a decent amount of the game before you’ll encounter them. I felt that my daughter was quite aware of the basic “spatial-numerical association” concept and should benefit more from the sums and subtraction part of the game. But alas there is no way to skip to that part. The game tries to spice things up a little with introducing new power-ups and a faulty slider along the way. I felt playing the game for a long time starts feeling stale. The first levels were good for children with absolutely no concept of basic maths but were redundant for a child with a more advanced knowledge of maths.
Conclusion
Numbala is maybe a bit too specifically catered to a certain age to be successful enough. Nevertheless, I’m really impressed with how maths are being successfully implemented in this game without being boring. If you have a kid who is just starting with maths I would definitely recommend this game. Just don’t bore your older kids with it or your cool dad/mom factor might be gone for a while.
