Number Knight emerged from a collaborative effort to create an engaging math learning experience for elementary students through a blend of roguelike gameplay and arithmetic challenges.
The project was inspired by the interest in creating a rouge-like game and wanting to teach and educate young audiences. We were further interested in a typically difficult subject so we chose elementary math as a target subject.
We built upon the NueDeck roguelike card game template in Unity, which provided a solid foundation for our card-based mechanics. This choice allowed us to focus on creating educational content rather than building basic card game functionality from scratch. Although in some cases we still had to do things from scratch.
Week 1 (March 11-17): The project began some ideation and a definition of our roles - Fabio handling game mechanics and coding while Evan focused on design, aesthetics and gameplay. We established our MVP goals: a two-level digital game with potential physical card deck integration.
Week 2 (March 18-24): We successfully implemented the card template and established version control. Miller suggested replacing traditional card interfaces with elemental icons, simplifying the game flow for younger users and making it more fun for users with different themes.
Week 3 (March 25-31): We settled on the projects visual identity through mood boarding, settling on a medieval/adventure theme over a classroom/RPG aesthetic. This decision helped make the educational content feel more like an adventure than a typical learning exercise.
Week 4 (April 1-7): Development accelerated with the creation of the Math Manager system for handling card interactions, while the visual elements started coming together with character sprites and scene designs.