By Adrian Martinez
I’ve spent the last year building a math RPG, and the thing that surprised me most wasn’t the tech. It was watching a student voluntarily solve 40 algebra problems in a row because he wanted to beat a dungeon boss. This is a kid who, according to his mom, “hates math.” He doesn’t hate math. He hates worksheets.
That distinction matters more than most people in education realize.
The Real Problem Isn’t Math
Somewhere around pre-algebra, something breaks. Kids who were fine with arithmetic suddenly hit a wall and just check out. The standard explanation is that math “gets harder,” but I don’t think that’s it. Plenty of hard things hold teens’ attention. Try telling a fifteen-year-old that Elden Ring is too difficult and see what happens.
The actual issue is that math loses its feedback loop. Early math is tangible. You count things, you measure things, you can see the answer. Once it goes abstract, the only reward left is a grade on a piece of paper. For a generation raised on instant feedback from every app on their phone, that’s a death sentence for engagement.
This hits homeschoolers in a specific way. Without a classroom full of peers working through the same struggle, it’s easy for a teen to feel like they’re the only one who doesn’t get it. The isolation can turn a rough patch with quadratic equations into a full-blown “I’m just not a math person” identity. And once a teenager decides they’re not a math person, getting them back is really hard.
Meanwhile, every RPG ever made has figured out how to keep people grinding through repetitive tasks for hours. The answer isn’t some big secret: make the repetition feel like progress, give players a reason to care about the outcome, and let them fail without consequence.
What RPGs Get Right That Textbooks Get Wrong
I play a lot of games. Always have. And when I started building Infinilearn, a retro-style math RPG, the design question I kept coming back to wasn’t “how do I make math fun.” It was “why do I willingly grind in Final Fantasy but refuse to do repetitive homework?”
The answers are obvious once you think about it.
In an RPG, you choose what to engage with. You pick your class, your build, your path through the world. Nobody assigns you 30 ice spells and tells you to cast them by Friday. You use ice magic because you decided that’s your playstyle, and you need it to get past the frost dragon. The ownership changes everything.
Then there’s failure. Getting a math problem wrong in a traditional setting feels permanent. It’s a red mark, a bad score, a curriculum that’s suddenly “behind.” Getting killed by a boss in a game is just information. You learn the pattern, you adjust, you try again. Nobody cries about dying to Ornstein and Smough. You just go back. That same relationship with failure, applied to solving equations, is transformative. I’ve watched students retry problems five or six times without frustration, because in context, retrying feels like strategy, not punishment.
For homeschoolers especially, there’s another layer. A lot of high schoolers I’ve talked to who learn at home say math is the loneliest subject. Science has experiments, English has books you can discuss, history has stories. Math is you and a textbook. But when you’re solving problems in a game alongside other players, math becomes something your party needs from you. That sense of being useful to a group is powerful motivation, especially for teens navigating the social side of learning outside a traditional school.
Why Most “Educational Games” Fail
Let’s be honest: most educational games are bad games. They take a drill app, wrap it in a cartoon skin, and call it gamification. You answer five multiplication questions, you get a virtual sticker. Nobody is fooled by this. Teens especially can tell the difference between a game that respects their intelligence and a worksheet wearing a costume.
The sweet spot is building games where the learning mechanic and the game mechanic are the same thing. Not “solve this problem to unlock the next level.” Instead, the problem-solving IS the gameplay. Your spell damage scales with how fast and accurately you solve equations. Your ability to progress through the world depends on your mathematical reasoning. The math isn’t bolted on. It’s the engine.
This matters for high schoolers who might be catching up on foundational concepts. There’s no shame built into the system. A tenth grader working through pre-algebra in a game isn’t “behind.” They’re building their character. The framing completely changes the emotional experience of reviewing material, which is half the battle with older students who’ve already decided math isn’t for them.
Where This Is Going
I think we’re at the beginning of a real shift in how education uses games. Not the surface-level gamification that’s been trendy for a decade, but actual game design applied to actual curriculum. The tools are there. The research supports it. And there’s a generation of builders who grew up as gamers and are now old enough to start making things. I’m one of them. I’m seventeen, I’m homeschooled, and I built Infinilearn because I wanted something like it to exist.
Games aren’t going to replace a good curriculum or an invested parent. But they can do something that textbooks physically can’t: give every student an individualized, patient, endlessly repeatable practice environment that doesn’t judge them and doesn’t get tired.
The kid I mentioned at the beginning, the one who “hates math,” asked his mom when he could play again. He didn’t ask when he could study again or practice again. He asked when he could play. That’s the whole point.
Adrian Martinez is a 17-year-old homeschooled founder of Infinilearn, a retro-style math RPG launched in February 2026. You can find it at infinilearn.com.
