Phoenix Quest is played in the context of a complex story in which Julie, an adolescent girl, embarks on a quest to find the Phoenix feather and thus prevent the world from turning dark. On her way, she must solve, with the player's help, both mathematical and language puzzles. The math puzzles address a wide variety of mathematical topics appropriate for children ages 10 to 14, including geometry, fractions, number sequences and simple programming.

We observed a small group of girls playing Phoenix Quest over a period of several weeks and learned which puzzles most often engaged players in mathematical thinking. One of the most well-designed puzzles, a computer programming task , for example, asks the player to move two robots around a screen with simple commands (e.g. FORWARD, BACK, RIGHT, LEFT) so that they eventually push four parts of a puzzle together to form a key. This puzzle supports significant planning and "debugging" by players, who often need to try several times before they get the key together. Other puzzles do not achieve their purpose as well. The fishing puzzle , for example, targets knowledge about angles; it asks the player to catch fish by specifying an angle and a distance at which to cast a line. Angles are indicated by a number of degrees that are always measured from the same starting point. Thus, while players may get good at naming angles as locations on a graph, with this activity they miss entirely the idea of the size of an angle and, in fact, confuse the two. This is also one of the timed puzzles, which makes thoughtful estimates of angle size difficult.

Some of the puzzles, such as the Poison puzzle, are too hard. In this puzzle, players must build a target fraction from other smaller fractions. The process can be quite complex, and the lack of a Help facility makes this puzzle particularly frustrating. The gears activity seems to support educated guessing, rather than development of underlying concepts. On the whole, however, the puzzles approach interesting mathematical topics in a creative way and foster quite a bit of mathematical conversation. Solving them often requires exploring and keeping track of multiple possible approaches.

We watched most carefully when the players were working with Hexagons , a number sequence puzzle, which has both good and bad aspects that apply to other games as well. Some of the discussions we observed (click here for sample dialogue ) showed that the girls were keeping track of many possibilities at once, discussing number relationships and thinking about what each piece of information told them. On the other hand, there was also a lot of guessing, and the puzzle could have done more to encourage more thoughtful play, such as requiring the player to specify the correct number pattern, rather than selecting it from a small list of options.

Is the Game Equitable?

The design of Phoenix Quest is based on data from a large scale interview study and a number of classroom observations investigating girls' preferences in video and computer games. In the interview study, girls in general saw story line, characters, worth-while goals, social interactions, creative activities and challenge as important elements in computer games. As a result, the game includes a strong story line, two female protagonists, a way to communicate with characters, a story that puts the player in a "helping" role, little violence, few timed puzzles, and many opportunities for playing collaboratively.

Julie is the central figure of the story, and there is another mysterious female character, Saffron, who plays a significant role. There are also two male characters: Darien, Julie's friend, and the Keeper, guardian of the Phoenix Feather. The communication theme is built on the fact that the player can communicate with all the players by writing postcards. The player sometimes receives mail from Julie providing a clue to the next step in the puzzle, and is encouraged to write back. Julie will reply, and what she says is based partly on what the player wrote (although this doesn't always yield coherent conversation!)

The narrative of the game is complex and rich, although its effect is lessened by the fact that it is revealed out of order (see below). The player is cast primarily as Julie's saviour or guide. For some players (especially girls), the goal of helping Julie is the main point of the game. For others, Julie fades into the background and the puzzles themselves take center stage.

Because there is little time pressure, collaboration is almost always a possibility. In many of the puzzles, however, there is pressure to make as few mistakes as possible, since in many puzzles, you can make only so many mistakes before Julie "dies." In our observations, we saw many examples of spirited discussions about the next thing to try or the meaning of a particular result.

Every puzzle in Phoenix Quest has several levels and the easiest ones are quite accessible. On the other hand, there is no Help system, even though players tend to ask Julie for help (which she can't give!)

Is it a Good Game?

One of the strengths of Phoenix Quest is its rich narrative and character structure. When they first start the game, players must figure out what is going on by exchanging postcards with Julie; this sets up a situation of both curiosity and suspense and, potentially, for some players, confusion. For some players, this narrative backdrop is a continuous source of engagement; others eventually decide Julie is "stupid," (because she can't offer them much help) and ignore the story, concentrating instead on the puzzles and the Strife cards. To increase the suspense, the chapters of the story are revealed out of order, so a player might get chapter 6 before chapter 3. This feature, however, is confusing for many players, and makes it hard to get involved with the characters in a lasting way.