This is a number matching game framework that primarily aims to build a stronger sense of numeracy.
For some students getting a firm grasp of the relationships among numbers, counting, and quantity is challenging. A game that lets students practice matching different representations of number and quantity could be useful. Some teachers like to use aspects of the Mayan number system, in which a bar represents five, and a dot represents a unit, in this connection. Other representations include groups of items, that may be homogenous, or (more challenging) may include items of different kinds.
The game framework would present (say) 15 buttons near the bottom of the screen, labeled with the Arabic numbers from 1 to 15. In a space above the buttons a cell containing a different representation of one of those numbers, say the Mayan form, is shown. The player earns a point by pressing the corresponding number button within a time cutoff (the cell disappears at the time cutoff). Then another form appears in the cell, to be matched, and so on.
The time cutoff should be managed so as to make the game “self levelling”. That is, at the start of play the cutoff would be generous; as the player accumulates points the cutoff is reduced, so that the player has to respond more and more quickly and accurately, helping them to automate the determination of the quantity represented in the cell. If the player makes many errors with a shorter cutoff, the time would be lengthened again, until speed and accuracy improves, and so on.
Various gamifications can be introduced into the scoring, such as a special display shown when particular point totals are reached. To enhance the partial reinforcement effect, one could introduce a Joker cell that can’t be matched, and sometimes causes a loss of points as a point threshold approaches (There’s a lot of evidence that interrupted progress towards a goal is more engaging than steady progress. The partial reinforcement effect is the technical name for the phenomenon that gambling is more addictive if one wins only some of the time than if one wins all the time.