

Monster Math – Grade 3 game - shenoyroopesh
https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/monster-math-grade-3-game/id924441242

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shenoyroopesh
Hi - I am one of the developers of Monster Math.

We've worked hard to craft this app; it combines beautiful artwork, hilarious
animations, an engaging story line, and a pretty unique game play. We've play-
tested it with kids from different countries, ruthlessly removing all
frustrations and building an experience that makes kids smile. While doing
Math!

The app is $2.99.

This is currently available in India and Canada - if you are not in these
countries, please visit [http://www.makkajai.com](http://www.makkajai.com) and
register so we can notify you once it is available in your country.

Feedback is welcome. Thanks.

Be Awesome,

Roopesh

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dewey
Just a general question from someone who never worked with the app store:
What's the reasoning for not making an app available in all countries?

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shenoyroopesh
Great question. Some of our reasons -

1\. Doing some experiments on the marketing side, especially keywords, before
launching everywhere. The first week/month on the app store gives a boost to
keyword rankings that can be leveraged to build good traction. Unfortunately
it also requires some experimenting to get them right, so this initial launch
in 1-2 countries can provide that data.

2\. Building some traction and credibility so that when we launch on the other
app stores, we can build on that (for e.g. #1 on the Canadian App store would
have a nice charm to it, if we achieve it!). This again helps with point 1
(better traction in launch week/month).

3\. Ensuring Support is not overwhelmed by unforeseen issues. We have tested a
lot, but never know what kind of crashes or even minor bugs might be seen in
the wild. We want to be awesome at customer experience.

4\. Gathering feedback in general.

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dewey
Thanks for replying, I was always wondering if marketing/shipping reasons or
other reasons (tax, bureaucracy) keep developers from just checking all
country boxes when they submit it to the store.

Another mystery resolved!

~~~
shenoyroopesh
:) Glad to be of help.

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acbart
I suppose drill-and-practice is adequate for young learners, but boy are
mathematical DaP games thick on the ground. This looks like a good
implementation of one, but it's hard for me to get excited about it. Still,
I'll be interested in hearing how you're testing whether it has an impact on
what students know.

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shenoyroopesh
Hi,

Thanks for the question.

We realised that getting kids excited about the game is the first step to
getting them to play it. Especially when they have blockbuster options like
Subway Surfer, Plants vs. Zombies, Temple run or even 100s of well-crafted
indie games, it's hard to get them to play math games if they are not fun. A
lot of math games are also just flash cards or questions retrofitted into
normal games.

Our main aim was to bridge this gap - we wanted to build something that is
just as engaging, just as fun as a real game - but also something that helps
kids practice arithmetic and actually enjoy it.

The game also (non-intrusively) tracks kids' progress so parents and teachers
can know exactly what skills they are struggling with.

Monster Math also includes Scaffolding - it guides kids to the right answers
when they struggle, or tells them what they got wrong.

We've seen kids getting a lot faster at mentally calculating basic arithmetic
problems with just a week of game play. We have not done a formal benchmarking
on this yet (so I can't prove it in numbers yet), but we plan to do one soon.

And yes, this is just the beginning - we want to add lots of learning content
too; something that will help us take corrective action from right within the
game with explanatory animations. We've already started chalking out some of
those features, and there's just so much work to be done!

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vblord
My kids have to do math drills every night. Every week they need to study +4s
then the next week +5s. I don't see an option for making everything the same
addin. If so I would definitely buy it. A hard thing to do is get your kid
interested in studying math facts. If they had this, they would think it's a
game. It looks good.

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shenoyroopesh
Thanks for the encouraging words.

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jbob2000
Why did you make the name of the game "Monster Math - Grade 3 game for kids to
learn Addition, Subtraction, Division, Multiplication mapped to Core
Curriculum"

Why not save that for the description and just keep the name as Monster Math?

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shenoyroopesh
The name of the app are like extra keywords (outside of what is already
defined in keywords). They help with search discovery.

To be honest, we are still not sure we want to keep it this way - I know the
name sounds a bit spammy, but then it helps us rank better on those search-
keywords (and also have more keywords outside of the name).

Do you have any experience on this trade off? I'd love to hear others' view on
this.

