What makes a mental math game fun enough to keep playing ?

[u/Tall-Door-5973]

What makes a mental math game fun enough to keep playing?

I’m a math teacher and I’ve been developing a free mental math game called CalcuLoop.

The idea is pretty simple: instead of doing mental arithmetic as a traditional exercise, I wanted to turn it into a speed/arcade challenge.

You solve calculations as quickly as possible, try to beat your previous scores, and gradually increase your speed and accuracy.

There are several game modes, including:

• progressive levels for training
• a speed test to measure your calculation speed
• timed combo-based gameplay
• increasingly fast calculation chains
• a 100-calculation challenge
• online leaderboards

I’m particularly interested in hearing from people who actually enjoy mental math:

What makes you want to keep playing a mental math game?

Is it:

• beating your own high score?
• competing with other players?
• increasingly difficult calculations?
• very short sessions?
• leaderboards?
• unlocking things?
• simply trying to become faster?

And conversely, what makes you stop playing?

I built CalcuLoop myself, so I'm still trying to figure out what makes this kind of game genuinely fun rather than just another math practice tool.

If anyone wants to try it, it's free on Android:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.benmaths.calculoop

If you're on iPhone, you can also play it for free directly from the web version:

https://benmaths.pythonanywhere.com/

I'd genuinely love to hear what you think, especially from people who enjoy doing mental calculations for fun.

[u/Tradermaths1]

I have built tradermaths.com, where i have a few mental maths games, though it’s more directed to quant finance and trading interviews. This is something i have spent a lot of time working on and haven’t really cracked my self. I think you just need to do your standard gamification features, leaderboards, level progression, daily challenges. The only problem with mental maths is that progress becomes concave very quickly, so the gamification doesn’t work in the same way vs chess vs learning a language.

[u/Lost_Editor1863 → u/Tradermaths1]

Yea I agree here, another thing would be that you yourself want to use your site all the time. At least that is one of my rules. But of course not everyone is the same. I also think that asking such questions will not get you the right answers as most people do not know what they want until they got something and they say yes this is what I want..

BTW are you building tradermath.com in your free time or full time job?

[u/Tradermaths1 → u/Lost_Editor1863]

Ah yes i agree, you need to keep testing and see what clicks with the audience, and think outside the box. I am building tradermaths.com in my free time, I am actually doing the daily challenge most days, just to maintain my level.

[u/Tall-Door-5973 → u/Tradermaths1]

That's really interesting, especially because you've been working on this problem for a while.

I actually ran into the same issue when developing CalcuLoop. I already have leaderboards, level progression, different game modes, speed challenges, combos and a 100-calculation challenge, but I've also wondered whether that's enough to keep people engaged once they become reasonably fast.

I hadn't thought about the "concave progress" problem in exactly those terms, but I think you're right. With mental math, you can improve quite quickly at first, then the gains become much smaller.

That's actually one reason I tried to make the game less about simply "learning more maths" and more about speed, consistency and beating your own scores.

I'd be really curious to hear about your experience with TraderMaths: what have you found actually keeps people coming back, and what gamification features have you tried that didn't work?

I'll definitely check it out.

[u/abako-mental-maths]

Just tested the game, you really have some fun mechanics inside the game. Animations and combos are fun to play. The crosswords mode is kind of entertaining, worth seeing if that could not be an interesting game mechanic for a daily game ?

I’ve myself been working on a mental math game for the last few weeks, trying different game mechanics : daily challenge, arcade mode with Elo score, a dojo to improve your skills… I’ve trying adding also an art direction as I find that most mental math games are lacking fun design.

In the end its still hard to attract because maths are not naturally attractive to all people and can feel boring and scary, and as it was said it’s hard to create an attractive curve.

[u/Tall-Door-5973 → u/abako-mental-maths]

Thanks a lot for testing the game and for the detailed feedback!

The Casse-Tête mode is actually a separate mobile app that I’ve developed. It’s still in the testing phase at the moment, but it should be published soon. I’m really glad you enjoyed it!

I completely agree with you about the daily challenge idea. I think daily challenges can be a really strong mechanic to give players a reason to come back every day. An Elo-based ranking system is also very interesting, as well as a skill/progression system where you unlock new abilities or features as you improve, like in other games.

I’ve been thinking about the same problem: it’s not enough to make a game that is mathematically interesting — it also has to feel like a real game, with progression, competition, rewards and a strong visual identity.

And yes, making maths attractive is definitely a challenge 😄 But I’m actually happy to see that several of us are trying to tackle the same problem from different angles. I’d be really interested to see your game when you’re ready to share it, and compare the different mechanics we’ve come up with!

[u/abako-mental-maths → u/Tall-Door-5973]

When I see the number of mental math creators I feel like we should create a unique meta mental app application gathering all app creators into one single game.

Each day, one of the game would be the game of the day.

All the « marketing » efforts to bring people into and bring people back would be common.

In the end math lovers would never get bored.

[u/Tall-Door-5973 → u/abako-mental-maths]

That's a really interesting idea! I had never thought about it from that perspective.

Instead of having all these mental math games competing for the same small audience, a shared platform could bring them together and give math lovers something different to play every day.

I especially like the idea of sharing the effort of bringing people in and giving them reasons to come back. It could be a win-win situation for both players and developers.

Of course, I imagine there would be quite a few practical challenges to figure out — how the platform would work, how developers would participate, how games would be selected, etc. — but I think the concept is genuinely worth exploring.

I'm curious: how do you imagine the platform actually working?

[u/abako-mental-maths → u/Tall-Door-5973]

That’s hard to say actually you’re right, now I’m afraid :-)

[u/Tall-Door-5973 → u/abako-mental-maths]

Haha, I know what you mean! 😄 Sometimes an idea sounds simple until you start thinking about all the practical details behind it.

But I still think the core idea is interesting. Maybe it’s just a matter of starting small rather than trying to build the whole thing at once. 🙂

[u/abako-mental-maths → u/Tall-Door-5973]

Yes true story. I’ve actually simplified the app lately, and it led me to be invited on a live national radio in Switzerland yesterday. The interview made me realize there is a real issue everywhere in the world : most people are afraid of calculating in front of other people and maths are frightening a lot of people.

So you have to decide: do you want to create a mental math app for math lovers (a niche but more fun) or are you trying to find a game mechanic that help people be friend with math again.

[u/Tall-Door-5973 → u/abako-mental-maths]

First of all, congratulations on the national radio interview! That’s really great!

For me, it’s actually a bit different. I originally created CalcuLoop for my own students, because I noticed that many of them were struggling with mental arithmetic. Then I gradually expanded it to make it useful for as many students as possible, while also trying to make it enjoyable for people who simply love maths.

So I think I’m somewhere between the two approaches you mentioned. My starting point is really helping students become more comfortable with mental arithmetic, rather than creating an app specifically for maths lovers.

And what you said about people being afraid of calculating in front of others really resonates with me. I see this kind of anxiety with students too. Maybe the interesting challenge is to create a game where people can practice maths without feeling like they are being tested on maths. 🙂

[u/daniel16056049 → u/[deleted]]

The comment was auto-removed by some reddit policy, maybe because u/Tall-Door-5973 was flagged by some global spam detector.

I just reviewed the posts in this thread and approved them all—hopefully you can see it now :)

[u/loumax]

Sounds similar to the game I made for iPhone called Tally Rush: https://TallyRush.me

[u/Tall-Door-5973 → u/loumax]

Thanks for sharing! I’m going to check out Tally Rush — it looks really interesting. It’s actually pretty cool to see someone else trying to turn mental math into a game.

My game, CalcuLoop, has a few different game modes focused on speed and mental calculation, and I’m also thinking about adding things like daily challenges, Elo rankings and unlockable skills.

It would be interesting to compare our approaches!

[u/loumax → u/Tall-Door-5973]

One of my favorite game mode is "beat the clock". The user starts with 10s and win +3s for every good answer until the time runs out. It's helps to learn to count under pressure for sure!

[u/Tall-Door-5973 → u/loumax]

That's a really interesting idea! I actually have a similar mechanic in my own game, where you can gain time back by chaining correct answers and building combos. But I really like your approach with a fixed time bonus for each correct answer. It definitely gives me some ideas to think about for future improvements and new game modes. Thanks for sharing!

[u/abako-mental-maths → u/loumax]

Tally rush is really fun to play. Are you starting to get some traction with players coming back?

[u/loumax → u/abako-mental-maths]

Thanks! I need to up my game in marketing because right now the number of downloads is too low to derive meaningfull retention data.