Our class just finished the first math project of the year. The driving question was, “How do games use math to make them more complex, interesting and replayable”. The instructions were to create a card game that used basic math operations. We each designed our own card game, including, the rules, the value and the cards.

These are my cards I created. They are pretty similar in design to a classic deck of cards and I did that because I wanted to keep the design simple so that it wouldn’t distract the players. There are four of each of these cards, meaning that  there are forty cards in a deck.(not including the rare cards)

These three cards are the more rare part of the deck. Cherry Bomb can appear twice during a round causing you to give your last winnings to your opponent. The Jolly Joker on the other hand, only appears once during a round. This card causes you to add a third card to your equation causing you to take longer to answer, increasing the chances of your opponent answering their question before you.

And this is what my dice looks like. Each side has a different mathematical operation including multiplication, subtraction, addition, division and exponents.

How my game works:

This is a two player game.

#1 Before you begin, you need to shuffle all the cards and then split the deck in half.

#2 Keep one half for yourself and give the other half to your opponent.

#3 Each player must spilt their own deck in half and set each deck face down beside each other.

#4 One of the players roll the dice and depending on the outcome, that tells you which mathematical operation will be used for that round.

#5 Each player counts 3,2,1 and then flips two of their cards over at the same time, this creates an equation. The first person to solve their equation first wins.

#6 Whichever person solves their equation first puts their two cards and their opponents two cards to the side.

#7 This cycle continues until you and your partner run out of cards. Once you do, each partner adds up their cards (for example: a 1 card, a 6 card and a 7 card equals 14 points) and whoever has the highest amount of points wins the round.

 

Overall this game is great for learning quick math and getting familiar with all the basic mathematical operations.