Part of the NSF-Funded Math Snacks suite of games, Game Over Gopher  is an educational tower defense game that teaches kids about coordinate pairs and quadrants while touching on more advanced mathematical concepts. It was the gold winner at the International Serious Play Awards and the most played game on BrainPOP and the Math Snacks website.

My Role / What I Learned

I was involved since the early stages of design, where I met with the content experts and instructional designers to solidify educational goals and design game UI/UX, features, and mechanics. Developing this game involved creating a lot of prototypes, some of which changed substantially between iterations.

Programming Game Over Gopher was no small task. The game is fairly robust, with multiple modes, achievements, many different towers, and even a treasure-finding mini-game. Not to mention the fact that it was localized in Spanish and integrated with the BrainPOP and GlassLabs APIs.

Despite the difficulty, the game came out great and it was quite gratifying to see it enjoyed in schools around the state, win awards, and tally up millions of plays online.