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Content Specifications
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The primary purpose of each game is to improve student understanding of the given topic.
Games will be used in the classroom for the following purposes:
Creative freedom is left to you! Stay inside the general bounds outlined on this page, and from there we will provide feedback on your implementation when we see the design proposal.
Each LO has its own Curriculum Document. These concept documents contain the overall scope of the LO in more detail, as well as a specific list of concepts that must be covered in a game.
At least 5 or ⅔, whichever is higher, of the concept count are required to be included in a game. Example: If a LO has 10 concepts, at least 7 should be included in the game. If a game has 6 concepts, 5 need to be included. If a game has 15 concepts, at least 10 need to be included.
For science LOs, focus on concepts labeled "core" over those labeled "peripheral."
| Item | Review Criteria |
|---|---|
| ACADEMIC GAMEPLAY QUALITY | |
| Players should learn and demonstrate understanding through gameplay-based reasoning, application, and problem solving. | Avoid designs where learning happens primarily through text-based instruction, long passive narration, recall prompts, or assessment-style tasks. |
| [Primarily in Social Studies & Science] Students should make meaningful academic decisions using evidence, context, tradeoffs, or consequences. | Choices should require students to reason about the target concept. Avoid choices that function as disguised multiple-choice questions with one obviously correct academic answer. Strong choices may involve evidence, constraints, stakeholder needs, competing priorities, costs, benefits, or likely outcomes. |
| [Primarily in Social Studies] Scenario-based social studies games should use choices that reveal cause-and-effect relationships, consequences, tradeoffs, stakeholder impacts, or competing civic/historical priorities through gameplay. | Students should not only be told the result of a choice. They should see consequences in the game world, system, character responses, public opinion, rights, resources, government function, community outcomes, or other relevant outcomes. |
| Game does not include traditional multiple-choice assessment items or disguised multiple-choice tasks. | Avoid standard quiz-style multiple choice. Also avoid “game choices” that are functionally the same as multiple choice, where students simply select the correct definition, label, fact, formula, or answer from a set of options. |
| The core gameplay mechanic should directly reinforce or represent the academic concept. | Reviewers should be able to explain how the mechanic connects to the LO. The mechanic should require academic reasoning, not just concept/question repetition. Avoid generic gamification where points, collection, movement, timers, or decoration are layered on top of worksheet-like tasks. |
| Players cannot simply click, guess, or exhaust options to complete the game. | Progress should depend on using the academic concept successfully. When students misunderstand, the game should provide concept-specific feedback and an opportunity to re-learn, revise, or retry. Avoid the word “FAIL” when students misunderstand academic material. |
| The game should teach students the academic content before they are asked to demonstrate understanding. | Students should encounter or build understanding through gameplay before being asked to demonstrate mastery. Feedback should explain why a choice was strong, weak, incomplete, or inaccurate, and should help students improve through another gameplay attempt. |
| Gameplay should build cumulative understanding over a logical sequence. | Later decisions should draw on patterns, evidence, consequences, or skills developed earlier. For topics involving civic, historical, scientific, or mathematical processes, the sequence should reasonably reflect how the real-world or academic process works, even if simplified. |
| Academic problems are not consistently repeated. | Players should encounter varied problems, scenarios, examples, evidence, configurations, or challenges. Repetition should support learning, not feel like the same task with minor surface changes. |
| Games should be fun and engaging, with game systems that motivate continued play. | Engagement should come from meaningful interaction, challenge, progression, feedback, and player agency. Avoid relying only on superficial rewards around academic questions. |
| Gameplay is intuitive for the target age range. | A player in the target grade band should understand what to do, how to interact, and how to improve without excessive external explanation. The game can be challenging, but confusion should come from the academic problem, not unclear controls or goals. |
| CONTENT ACCURACY AND LEARNING OBJECTIVE COVERAGE | |
| All instruction is academically correct. | Content should be accurate for the subject area. Simplifications should be age-appropriate without becoming misleading or leading to common misconceptions. |
| Confirm that the game is linked to the required number of core main concepts. | The game should cover at least two-thirds of the core main concepts, or five, whichever is greater. Reviewers should confirm that the linked main concepts are not only mentioned but meaningfully and correctly taught through gameplay. |
| [Primarily social studies] Social studies games should include interactive use of relevant primary source(s) tied to the LO when required or appropriate | Students should examine and apply source excerpts, claims, evidence, or ideas to make gameplay decisions, solve problems, or progress. Primary sources should not appear only as optional reading, decoration, or background flavor. |
| A general definition on primary sources: Thinking Like A Historian (McGraw Hill) could be helpful for developers to understand their value. (pages 3-4). | |
| [Primarily social studies] Social studies games should focus on historical, civic, geographic, economic, or cultural ideas rather than rote memorization. | Students should engage with causes, effects, perspectives, systems, decisions, evidence, civic principles, geography, economics, culture, or context. Dates and facts may be included, but they should support understanding rather than serve as the main academic challenge. |
| [Primarily social studies] Social studies games should help students understand the impact of historical decisions. | Students should understand why decisions mattered and what effects they had on people, institutions, laws, rights, communities, places, or the United States more broadly. |
| [Primarily social studies] Social studies games should avoid assigning guilt, blame, or responsibility to students or groups based on identity. | Instruction should not make students feel personally responsible for historical events based on race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, or other identity characteristics. Do not frame groups as inherently bad or culpable. Focus on factual events, decisions, systems, and impacts on those affected. |
| All on-screen words are spelled correctly and grammatically correct. | Review all UI text, dialogue, labels, instructions, feedback, buttons, menus, and academic terms for spelling and grammar. |
| Vocabulary and reading level are appropriate for the lowest grade level in the target audience and grade band. | Text should be understandable for the youngest students expected to play the game. Academic vocabulary should be supported through context, interaction, or concise explanation. |
| STUDENT SUITABILITY/ACCESSIBILITY AND PRODUCTION REQUIREMENTS | |
| Game does not include material inappropriate for school. | Avoid violence, firearms, bombs, knives, blood, gore, smoking, vaping, drug use, mind-altering substances, alcohol, harm to human-looking characters, harm to animals, insinuated killing, or death. If there is conflict with an enemy, they should be chased away rather than eliminated or killed. Death is allowed only when it is part of the learning objective, such as the food chain. |
| Game avoids stereotypic presentation of gender, race, region, or culture. | Characters, settings, accents, clothing, names, dialogue, occupations, regions, cultures, and scenarios should not rely on stereotypes. |
| Characters are diverse in gender, race, culture, and ability. | When characters are present, representation should be inclusive and varied. Diversity should feel natural and respectful, not tokenized. |
| Game is between 5 and 25 minutes in duration. Ideal duration is 15-20 minutes. | Expected playtime should fall within the required range for a typical student in the target grade band. |
| All text is large, clear, and concise. | Font sizes should be readable on a small Chromebook screen. Text should be concise enough to support gameplay without overwhelming students. |
| Gameplay is accessible and usable for the target age range. | Controls, navigation, instructions, UI, and visual hierarchy should be clear for the intended grade band. Students should be able to recover from mistakes and understand how to continue. |
This applies to the gameplay content and the game name, thumbnail, and description.
Language selection will happen outside the game, via teacher or student settings. A game should be able to handle multiple languages, but only one language will be passed in at a time. When designing your text boxes and font choice, consider how other languages’ characters will render. Make sure to include call-to-action buttons in the language JSON file so they can be translated. Spanish is the most common secondary language in the United States, and it is the most important one to have compatible text UI in the game. See below for some examples of font mishaps when a non-English language is passed into a game. Legends of Learning will complete all necessary localization translations.
If you use rich text in your game to highlight words with colors, bold, or italics, please use hex codes. This will prevent the translation from breaking the rich HTML text and showing it as plain text.
Please be careful with any placeholder text that you use for testing. If that placeholder text is kept in the game build files, and there's an error where the game doesn't properly replace the placeholder text with the correct values in the language JSON, it can be a problem for students. Any inappropriate text content, whether displayed accidentally or not, will result in an immediate ban of the studio's games on the platform.
Creativity with the game name, tile, and description will help the game stand out on the platform. All of these are things the teacher sees first when looking through our game library, and they can make a huge difference for teachers deciding which games to choose for their students. For the wording of the game's description, avoid using the words student and teacher as we are expanding our offering outside just the school setting. Instead of student or teacher, use the word "players".
Please keep the teacher in mind as the target audience so they can help their students play the games. Instructions are submitted as plain text in the developer portal, which is supported on the teacher platform. However, we encourage you to send a PDF instructions file to gamedevs@legensdoflearning.com. Use screenshots from the game to put the instructions in context. Legends of Learning will handle uploading PDF instruction files to the teacher platform.
If you encounter any issues or have questions not covered in this documentation, our dedicated support team is here to assist you. Contact us at gamedevs@legendsoflearning.com.