A guide to designing and playing a classroom game with Serious Play — from a blank screen to a finished game.
Serious Play turns your existing course materials into a ready-to-play classroom game. Add your material, answer a few quick questions it can’t, confirm the brief, and the tool proposes a small number of game models built specifically from that material — then builds the full game on the spot so you can play it immediately in the browser.
GROUNDED BY DESIGN
The AI invents game structure freely, but uses subject facts only from the material you provide. It will not fill gaps with its own general knowledge. A second AI pass checks the proposals against your material and flags anything that looks invented.
PLAYABLE TODAY
A team-based board of category/point-value questions. Best for whole-class review.
A solo or two-player multiple-choice quiz board. Best for individual practice or head-to-head review.
Teams take on a role from your subject's own world and compete across a board that simulates it. Best for applying and defending concepts rather than reciting them.
Rules for each game are shown right inside it — look for the “How to play” / “Rules” button once you start playing.
Your course material— notes, slides, readings, or anything you want the game based on, as PDF, Word, or PowerPoint files (up to 20 MB each). A notes box covers anything that isn’t in a document.
A rough learning goal in mind — even a one-sentence idea is enough to get started.
No account or login is required.
Getting from a blank screen to a game proposal typically takes about five minutes.
Add your files, tag each as material or syllabus. The AI reads them immediately and checks any syllabus goals.
A short interview fills the gaps, then you confirm the brief.
Choose a proposed game model. The app builds it instantly — and you play it right there.
Drag your files onto the dropzone or browse for them — slides, readings, case studies, and your syllabus too, if you have one. Each file gets tagged Material or Syllabus. The tag is guessed from the filename and you can flip it with one tap, so the tool knows which text to build questions from and which to mine for learning goals.
Underneath the files sits an optional notes box for anything that isn’t in a document — a rubric, a constraint, the thing students always get wrong. Once you continue, the AI reads everything immediately: no interview to sit through first, no form to fill in blind. It comes back with the central tension your material creates and the misconception students usually fall into.
If you tagged a syllabus, it also checks each stated learning goal against your material. Anything the material doesn’t actually cover gets flagged, and this screen holds you there until every gap is closed — point the goal at a document, add more material, reword it, or say it’s not part of this module. There is no way past it by design.
A short interview asks only what the documents couldn’t answer — who your students are, how a win is recognised, and how the game gets played — with suggested answers drawn from the material the AI already read.
Then a confirmation board lays out everything the games get built from as a set of cards — central tension, misconception, learning goals, class setup, and the rest — sized by how much each one matters. Every card edits in place, one at a time, so this stays a review screen rather than another form, and nothing reaches game generation without your sign-off.
If your confirmed brief or material is too thin, the AI asks exactly one clarifying questionbefore trying again. Otherwise you’ll see one to three game proposals, each with a pitch, how it plays, a real example question from your material, and a grounding banner confirming nothing was invented.
Click “Pick this”to build the full game. This takes a few seconds while the AI writes the question deck or the board, and then it opens right there in the browser. All three engines — Jeopardy, Snakes & Ladders, and the board game — are playable today.
The board game runs with you as facilitator: teams land on tiles that trigger themed events, draw decision cards they have to justify with course concepts, and you award the in-game currency for the reasoning. Richest team at the finish wins, and a debrief screen closes the session with questions drawn from your material.
The AI only uses facts from what you upload or paste. The more complete your material, the better the questions.
If Stage 3 asks a clarifying question instead of proposing games, add a bit more detail and try again.
Uploaded files aren’t stored permanently — only the extracted text is kept for your current session.
Every finished game has a Download button that saves a standalone HTML copy — it plays offline in any browser, with no account and no internet.