Games That Make You Smarter

Game Progress

Interested in game progress at 7 Generation Games? Wondering what we’re doing next? Is there a new update to your favorite games? Check out all the news on game progress here.

new page with background added and new activity — Today, for the first time in a month, I woke up in my own bed and had nothing scheduled. No meetings, no family events to attend. The happy thought that went through my mind is that now I can spend all day working on our new game, Forgotten Trail. Today, […]

Why the “game” part of math games is so important

April 30, 2016 in AnnMaria / Educational Games / Game Progress by AnnMaria De Mars

Eva, Maria and me — I get asked this question all of the time in many, many different contexts, from elementary school children who play our games, to game developers who are not involved in education. There are multiple questions for this, but let me answer the grown-ups first. I care so much about math […]

Why Do You Care So Much About Math?

April 30, 2016 in AnnMaria / Educational Games / Game Progress / Math by AnnMaria De Mars

cat — Well, it’s been a minute. Months ago, I started writing about reusable code and was then interrupted by flying around the country to present game results, getting an alpha version of our Aztech game to testers, getting Forgotten Trail ready for release FRIDAY (!!!) etc. You can read Part 1 […]

Game Design: Reusable Code, Part 2

April 27, 2016 in AnnMaria / Code Talk / Educational Games / Game Progress / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Giant house screen shot — A few weeks ago, I posted an activity that I had started where the player had to find items in the giant’s house. (Brief background – in Forgotten Trail, there is a legend that involves a giant.) I asked input on options we were considering: Clicking on the item gives […]

Reader Comments Made into a Game

April 25, 2016 in AnnMaria / Game Progress by AnnMaria De Mars

teachers — Forgotten Trail will be available next week, Aztech in another month, and we’re already working on updates and expansion. It’s true as a wise man once told me, Great games are like great artwork. They are never finished. They are just abandoned. Our latest project is adding levels of difficulty […]

Giving Students Control in Math Class

April 12, 2016 in AnnMaria / Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Games / Game Progress by AnnMaria De Mars

Draft 2 — I went to the Computer Users in Education conference in Palm Springs last month, not knowing what to expect. It turned out to be way cooler than what you’d expect and I definitely intend to go back for more reasons than I can tell you in just one post. One […]

CUE Meets the Giant

April 4, 2016 in AnnMaria / Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Games / Game Progress by AnnMaria De Mars

Door leading into the jungle — We’re knocking off the last few edits on our grant proposal, we completed the pretest of math scores with 125 students with another 150 to take the test next week. We have hundreds of players participating in the beta tests for Forgotten Trail and Aztech. So, now that we have […]

The week of 1,000 changes

February 21, 2016 in AnnMaria / Game Progress / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Iowa map, with corn inset — I don’t think a lot of video games are set in Iowa. Our game under development, Aztech, begins in Iowa. We didn’t pick Iowa for any specific reason. We just wanted a state that was rural and far away from central America. Very early in the game, our heroes are […]

Here’s to you, Iowa

February 19, 2016 in AnnMaria / Game Progress / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

house — So … this is what I am working on today …. In short, and this is a rant for another day, we found through our pretests that the average student needed FAR more remedial help in mathematics than we had expected. Each time you go up a level in the […]

Game Design: Reusable Code, Part 1

February 17, 2016 in AnnMaria / Code Talk / Game Progress / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Ronda running — We had our weekly game developers’ meeting yesterday and were extremely lucky to have a stellar cast of visitors drop in; best-selling author Derek Landy, star programmer Dave Taylor and our favorite Pokemon moderator of all time, Ronda Rousey. Prior to the meeting, our marketing staff had requested, “Since this […]

It’s an Early Adopter Discount, Not a Late Majority Discount

December 17, 2015 in AnnMaria / Educational Games / Game Progress by AnnMaria De Mars

We are the mid point of the week again and for some it means that the weekend is coming up and you get to take time off work. Yay for you! Here at 7 generation games there are a few who don’t get a weekend off because we are making every […]

Tourist Visa Amazeballs^2

October 21, 2015 in 7GenGames / Game Progress by Marisol Schultz

Picture of codices. The Mayans used these to record their history — Our wonderful artist, Justin Flores, is always telling me that you can say more with art than with words. To show you our game progress on Aztech, our bilingual game coming out next year, I decided to include a couple of images on the off chance that he is right […]

An Aztech Picture Worth a Thousand Words

September 5, 2015 in Game Progress / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars