WordPlay: An educational game for under 6s

[randomnovice]

Hi all,

I know this is pretty niche(!) but I thought I'd share anyway.
If you have young children learning to talk, read and spell, here's a little game I made with löve.

The different gamemodes are:
Say It! -- Basically just flashcards. A picture appears and the word is read out. Suitable for under 2s?
Spot It! -- Click on the picture that matches the word. Suitable for 1-2 year olds?
Rhyme It! -- Choose the two words that rhyme. Suitable for 3+ year olds?
Hear It! -- Distinguish between similar sounding words e.g. lock, block, clock, rock. Suitable for 3+ year olds?
Fred It! -- Drag the phonemes into the correct order. Suitable for 4+ year olds?
Spell It! -- Spell the word. Suitable for 5+ year olds?
Play It! -- Five questions each from Rhyme It!, Hear It!, Fred It! and Spell It!

Enjoy!

[salvapunk]

Thank you so much!

[milon]

I happen to have two kids: 2.5 years and 8 months. This looks like something that could be relevant for the older one, and the younger one in the near future. I've been trying to figure out how to begin teaching phonemes to the older one, and this could be a great intro. Thanks!

Here's some feedback in case you're looking for it:

* For all the parts where a word is spoken, add an option to repeat the word. Sometimes things get noisy, and if you miss the spoken word you're just guessing.

* For all the parts with images, add labels to the images. I'm American and we often use a slightly different vocabulary. For example, what you call a 'goal' I call a 'net', etc. I expect this could be tough for young kids otherwise.

* Fred It! -- Once the letters are all in the right spot, play the phoneme sounds individually in sequence before playing the word itself. I think that'll help reinforce sounding things out.

* Hear It! -- One time I was presented with literally one option (Queen). I haven't looked at your code, but I assume the list generation is fairly dynamic. One way to keep things dynamic while avoiding that is if the list generator returns a list with less than 2 (or 3?) options, discard it and choose another set.

[randomnovice]

Great feedback thanks!

[milon]

Two more quick things:

1. I tried it on Android via the Play Store love app, and it works great! Thanks!

2. Consider modifying or changing the included font. The letter 'j' looks like 'i'. Not a big deal for most adults, but for young kids this is a potential difficulty. See screenshot. In case it's not obvious or the pic gets deleted, the word is supposed to be 'jug' but it looks like the available letters are: i, u, g

[randomnovice]

Great to know it works on Android (I'd not tested on anything but desktop). Yep - the font change was already on my list to-do for that very reason! Shame, as I liked the font in other ways

[milon]

I agree - it's a really nice font. I haven't looked into the code, but maybe you can edit the font a bit if you really want to keep it?

And again, this is a great game. Thanks for posting it!

[pgimeno]

maybe https://www.dafont.com/barthowheel.font ?

[randomnovice]

Perfect find - thanks pgimeno.

I've included those suggestions and uploaded a new version (first post). I've also managed to finish off a total of nine categories and tidied up a few potential bugs.

[milon]

Nice, thanks!