The Situation
A course creator came to me wanting their courses to feel less like a list of lessons and more like something students are excited to come back to:
- Modules felt like a checklist, with no real sense of progress or achievement
- Ticking "done" proved nothing about whether a student had actually learned it
- No easy way to see which students were moving and which had stalled
- Building a custom game for every single course would cost far too much
They needed something that works for every course they make, not a one-off.
What I Built
Instead of gamifying one course by hand, I built a system that does it for any course. The creator plugs in their course details, and the system builds the game around them.
Plug In Any Course
The creator adds their lessons, the tasks for each one, and a few touches like the course's colour and its "boss". The system builds everything else: the layout, the colours for every module, the levels, the rewards and the progress tracking. It adjusts to however many modules the course has, and a new course needs no rebuild.
Progress You Can See
As a student masters each module, it lights up, until the whole course glows. Skill bars, named to fit the course, fill up as they go, so progress is something students can see at a glance instead of a percentage buried in a menu.
A Real Game
Students level up through titles as they progress, such as Novice to Master. Every module earns a badge and a new "power". And every course has a boss, the obstacle the course helps students overcome, like "The Blank Page". Each module they finish drains its health, until they defeat it. Every win gets a burst of confetti.
Proof, Not Just Ticks
A module only lights up when the student has actually done the work. The creator chooses how each one is proven: ticking off a task, answering a quiz question correctly, sharing a link to something they made, or submitting their project work.
The Creator's View
Every student's progress lands in one simple table: how far they are, their level, how many modules they have finished, and when they were last active. The creator can spot who is flying and who needs a nudge, without chasing anyone.
The Infrastructure
Students join with just their name, email and class code, with no account to set up. Their progress saves automatically as they go, and they can download it as a backup or move it to another device. Everything syncs to the creator's view, and the private keys to that data are kept safely on the server, never in the page students see. It runs on low-cost hosting, so adding a new course or a new cohort does not add to the bill.
The Results
What Comes Next
Every new course the creator makes can be a game from day one. And the system is not limited to courses: any programme with steps to complete, from client onboarding to staff training, can become a journey people can see themselves moving through.