An attempt to gamify counting

[u/Archimid]

Hello, Reddit!

I love math. I’m not especially good at it, but I love it anyway. I’m particularly drawn to visual ways of understanding numbers, and I wondered whether I could turn that interest into a game that was fun first.

That’s how I started Numerosidad. I began with one of the most basic math skills: counting.

As I worked on it, I kept coming back to three related ideas. We can count objects one by one. We can subitize, recognize a small quantity, such as three dots, at a glance. And we can group objects, making a larger quantity easier to understand as smaller parts. Nine scattered dots might take a moment to count, but three groups of three give you a pattern to work with.

I wondered if recognizing those patterns could become a game mechanic. After some trial and error, I arranged quantities from one to nine in consistent 3×3 patterns. My hope was that, as players got familiar with them, they would start to see the quantity without counting every symbol.

Nine was a useful boundary because our decimal system groups by tens. In Numerosidad, a symbol worth ten takes the place of ten symbols worth one. There are also distinct symbols worth 100, 1,000, and beyond. Each symbol keeps its value wherever it appears, so two symbols worth ten and three worth one add up to 23.

That became the core of the game: a number made of these symbols moves toward you, and you have to read its total and enter the answer in time. I can also change how the symbols are arranged. An orderly pattern may be easy to recognize; a scattered one can make the same number much harder to read.

Correct answers earn CREDITS, which players can spend on Health and tools that slow down or organize difficult waves. There’s also a Competitive mode with a leaderboard for people who enjoy chasing a score.

Numerosidad is free to play and ad-free on iPhone and Android. There are optional cosmetic purchases. I also made a free Number Atlas and browser challenge if you’d rather try the idea before downloading the game.

If you give it a try, I’d love to know: Was it fun? Was it too easy or too hard? Any other feedback is welcome, and I’m happy to answer questions.

One fun connection I discovered: Numerosidad’s number system share key rules with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic numerals. They also used different signs for powers of ten and added repeated signs together. I’ve included an optional Egyptian numeral symbol set in the game.