Videogames provides an engaging experience that requires to use several senses and skills at the same time: from sight to hearing, from reasoning to responsiveness. Players need to pay adequate attention to go through the different levels of the game without losing.

Using this principle, we design the game mechanics of our videogames to keep players highly engaged, in order to avoid that they can get lose concentration or - even worser - get bored! This positively affects the ability to remember information and new topics, which are transmitted by the various videogame channels, such as images on the screen, played sounds or required actions to be performed in the virtual world.

The desire to achieve a goal is an innate characteristic of players. Videogames provide several possibilities: from battles against enemies that are controlled by the artificial intelligence, to challenging other human players, going through mid-case scenarios like time challenges or ensuring that as few mistakes as possible are made. All these modes require players to use all their skills to win. The final score is used as a comparison tool with others, encouraging players to try again the game to reach a higher score.

We use these observations to allow a high replayability to our games, in order to support an incremental learning of the study topics. Since game mechanics are based on them, at each new session players will have to reuse the topics that were already learned in the previous ones, but this time they have to master topics better if they want to exceed other players.

Videogames are located in fictional worlds that can be a lot different from the real one. They have their own history, characters with specific features and an internal economy that is based on points or other imaginary objects. Besides being an easy way to escape from reality temporarily, they inspire the imagination and the creativity of players, allowing to be recorded in their long-term memory.

These thoughts make it possible for us to transform study topics from gray abstract concepts to scenographic landscapes and funny characters, in order to be easier to understand and remember for students. Moreover, we add a main plotline that leads players along their journey in the game, in order to encourage them to progress and to be willing to resume in next sessions.

In videogames players have to face a sequence of skill challenges: collecting a set of hidden objects, solving a puzzle or defeat an enemy. Any of them has to be completed within a time limit or a maximum number of tries. These win conditions may change according to difficulty levels, which are increased proceeding along the game.

We follow this idea to balance the main mechanics of our videogames, in order to adapt the challenging level to skills and knowledge of the player. The game experience should be neither too easy to become boring, nor too hard to lead to frustration. In the same manner, new study topics are introduced using an increasing approach along all the game journey.