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October 2021: Our Puddle Hopping app has received thorough and well-written reviews at Free Apps For Me and Apps Like These:

Free Apps For Me Puddle Hopping review

Apps Like These Puddle Hopping review

Please visit their site at https://freeappsforme.com/

Our Puddle Hopping app has been selected as a ‘Hidden Gem’ in a feature blog:

Underrated Trivia Games To Play On IOS Devices

Thank you, GameKeys!

Our Science 8 app (published under Ideate Games, our app and R&D imprint) is mentioned in a feature article: Top Education Related Games (Hidden Gems) by Kevin White. The article can be found at

Forest Fire!

Funded! Forest Fire! was fully funded through Kickstarter (thank you all!) and has been released for sale.

Forest Fire! was inspired by a little boy who loves fighting fires. The game is set in a densely wooded yet populated area where forest fires often occur. When fires start, players work together to put them out and save houses and schools from destruction.

Players use several different fire fighting approaches – bulldozers, water, helicopters and chemical extinguishers.

As the game progresses, environmental factors like wind and drought increase, affecting the frequency, intensity, and spreading speed of fires, simulating the effects of climate change.

See here for ordering information.

Immune Force

In Immune Force players experience the power and ingenuity of the body’s natural defenses and the variety of microbial dangers it faces.

This game is now available for purchase at TheGameCrafter.

The game takes place in a human body, where players cooperate to mobilize the immune system, harnessing macrophages, neutrophils, Killer T-cells, vaccines, treatments, antibodies, and bacteriophages, fighting a continuous onslaught of over two dozen types of bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, and cancers.

The game has a large board with a schematic body, 68 cards, and over 100 pieces that represent the microbes and the immune system cells.

Each of the different microbes and immune defenses act approximately in accordance with current scientific and medical understanding.

Concepts may be complex, but game play is simple enough to be fun for all ages. The game is mostly luck, but plenty of variation and opportunities for simple strategy in the placement of pieces and management of treatment cards.

Mixed-Up Museum

As part of my exploration of putting educational (especially student-created) content into simple games, I am experimenting with 3D games, to see if they are more compelling for the history content. I created a simple 9-room ‘museum’ with different images/objects on each wall.

Five of the 36 are misplaced (item does not match the description) and the task is to carry the items to the correct wall of the correct room. Rooms are arranged by date to help in route planning.

The game is very much a beginner 3D effort, I am just learning the 3D game environment.

This game could be used for student projects — it will accept a spreadsheet of content that a student could create and have an instant simple game. This version has 8 of my own topics.

The game works, though the visual design is plain. You can download the Mac, Windows, and Linux versions of the game:

Browser: https://www.ideategames.org/mum/museum.html

Windows: https://www.ideategames.org/Museum_win.zip

Mac: https://www.ideategames.org/Museum_mac.zip

Linux: https://www.ideategames.org/Museum_linux.gz

Threads — Classroom version

See our separate page describing how to play a simple connected-history game in history class.

Serendipity Machine

This is more a whimsical creativity stimulus than a game, although we are working on a simple game version. This will be released as an app. It is available now in open Beta, and named Meanderings.

The app simply creates a random walk based on the simplest word matching from one topic entry to another. You set the starting topic (choice of 11 topics at the moment) and the ending topic, and the app finds a random path between.

The idea is that randomly mashing ideas together like this sometimes stimulates a serendipitous idea, even possibly can help solve a problem. But even if it doesn’t, it is fun and makes me smile every time.

History Links

This is a simple online game (really just a small idea of what could be a game) about history. You are given an event and asked to provide a brief “cause” for that event. The game can also be played in reverse, where you give the effects caused by the event. Your proposition is then evaluated by ChatGPT for likely-to-be-true, strength of the causal relationship, and how specific your proposition is. Your score for each turn is added and after 10 turns, you could be declared a “Master” of the history!

This simple game can be played with topics of any list of historical events. We would love to work with history teachers to create versions just for their students (available within a day). Please contact us at [email protected]

It is our goal to extend this simple game into a multi-player competitive game, if we can bring together a team to design the game.

Zero-Sum

Zero-Sum is in play testing, available in Google Play as an alpha. We are still evaluating if it is worth the effort to make it a multiplayer app with remote players.

Zero-Sum is a complex macro-economics strategy game for multiple players. Each player runs a country and sets financial priorities, which are then played out on a global stage with or against the other players.

A valid macro-economics model underpins the game, driven by the card choices of the players. Players can also alter the economic model to suit their beliefs or preferences.

Players can choose to go for a competitive win (financial trade balance), or a “Economic Fairness” win (those in power (wealthy) are responsible for providing opportunity for those less fortunate — low unemployment and low wealth gap), or an “Industry” win, or a “Standard of Living” win (low cost of living with high consumer spend). Is it possible to achieve more than one?

Detailed rules are available here.

The Wiki Murders

Really a game about history. Given 12 historical locations around a fantasy village square, 10 historical figures (suspects who are also witnesses) in 10 of those locations, and 6 historical objects as potential weapons, figure out who was the murderer in what location using what instrument.

Mixed-Up Museum

This history game is set in a 3D maze of 9 rooms in a 3×3 square. All doors to adjacent rooms are available for use, and indicated by a ‘transporter’ (pulsing blue oval). Each room has 4 items or images, one on each wall. Some of those items are in the wrong place.

Each item has a description. An item is in the wrong place when the description and the image do not match. It is always the image that is in the wrong place. Descriptions are always in the right place.

The player’s goal is to rearrange the items that are in the wrong place to be in the correct place. Level 1 has only 2 items in the wrong place (of the 36 items), and the player’s task is to take one of them, swap it with the other incorrect item, and replace the swapped item into its correct place.

Level 2 has 3 items in the wrong place, and levels 3 and 4 have 5 items in the wrong place.

Detailed rules are available here.