Korean Kids Playing Soosooland Games at School

1. Soosooland in the Classroom – Time with the Kids

When I introduced Soosooland at school, some kids wanted to play Soosooland games during break time. Other kids usually play with blocks. These days, classroom blackboards are touchscreens. I split the screen and open Soosooland in two windows side by side. At first, the kids only wanted to play Gomoku. When the computer wins and the kids lose, they get frustrated — but I feel secretly delighted and smile to myself.
Then they start trying out other games, and I watch from the sidelines. At first they click around randomly, hoping to stumble onto something, but gradually they start thinking seriously before pressing a button, and begin discussing among themselves. If someone is about to click too hastily, others say, “Wait, hold on,” and they share their thoughts, eventually agreeing, “That seems like the best move,” before making their challenge.
When they play Numzzle, the kids watch what the clever computer does and learn how to find the best possible equation.
And they don’t really like competing in two-team mode — they prefer everyone joining forces on one side to take on the computer together.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

2. A Fix on the Phone – and the Kids’ Non-Reaction

Yesterday I discovered that a filename was wrong. It should have been “Moeum Round Animals and Plants” but it said “Moeum Round Food.” I said “Kids, I’ll fix it right away” and went into GitHub on my phone to fix it. I was very pleased because I had never fixed a game on my phone before, and I expected the kids to cheer when the screen title changed, but they didn’t. They seemed to take it for granted and had no reaction.
Looking back, from the kids’ perspective, it was like saying “Mom, please flip the fried egg” and not being surprised when mom flips it and cooks it.

3. A Promise to the Kids – Updating Moeum Round

I was going to make Breeze Pop and Breeze Zen over the weekend, but my promise to the kids was more important. Yesterday morning I said “Teacher uploaded a new game at dawn today” and introduced Moeum Round, but there were no hints in “Moeum Round Animals and Plants” about whether the answers were animals or plants, and it was too difficult to guess the answers. So I said “I’ll add hints for you,” so this morning I separated the animals and plants that appear in the word pool. So I made “Moeum Round Animals” and “Moeum Round Non-Animal Organisms” with hints added.
Kids will be able to distinguish what they lump together as “sea creatures” into fish, mammals, mollusks, etc. And through the quiz, they will naturally learn that mushrooms, which they thought were plants, are actually fungi.

4. Adding Game Difficulty Levels

When watching kids play, some would say “Make it easier” or “Make it harder,” so adding more difficulty levels was a good call. When Worpuzz Breeze was first released, it had a sprout emoji to mark it as a new game. After kids tried Breeze and said it was a bit hard, I added an easy mode.

5. Gomoku Master

Gomoku has four difficulty levels: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and Master. Kids keep losing but still insist on playing Master mode. Originally there were only three levels — Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced — and then I added Master, where the user plays as white stones. Adding Master mode was the right call.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​