WordPlay is a 2-4 player table top game for players in 6th grade between the ages of 10-12 years old. The total amount of players in this game is 24 players altogether.The game is an exciting, fun way for ESL students to learn new vocabulary words that appears in the English language. Since there are no controllers used in this game it takes place in the real world.The rules are easy to follow however some groups had difficulties understanding how to play so they had to observe others before playing. The first step is for all players to roll the dice to determine the order, then they roll again to determine the number of spaces they will move along the board. WordPlay is a linear game as the players can only move forward and backward. The player receives feedback from the instructor and interacts directly with the game. The colors on the board represent different task the players must fulfill such as yellow means they must properly use the word in a sentence. The different colors represent different things however there is also the “Wild Card” in which the player must use their semantic memory to recall words taught from a previous lesson. If the player lands on the “Wild Card” they have 2 minutes to successfully fulfill all 4 task for the word selected.
The players were divided in different groups of students of similiar IQs who all had a fair chance to win the game so WordPlay is balanced and there is nothing broken in the game. Once all players pass “start” the game is complete however, the first player who passes “start” will receive 5 extra points on the next exam. As this is the only thing they receive from playing this game, the players must work hard in order to get the points. The conflict in this game is when the students started to yell out the answers, not allowing the other players a chance to answer on their own. Since it is sometimes difficult to retrieve things from your long term memory especially after some time has passed, this may be the only challenge in WordPlay because players need to recall words from both the new unit and old unit. After the WordPlay is completed the player will have a better understanding of a new language and new vocabulary words as well as the extra points so for this reason, the achiever in the Bartle Taxonomy will most like this game. Overall, the players in WordPlay are engaged as it is a fun game that allows them to use their memory in an exciting way.
