Monsters in the Elevator: A Cooperative Math Card Game for Kids

My name is Jason Wiser. I teach Art, Animation, and Game Design at Harvard, Tufts, Emerson, and Northeastern Universities. I used to work in console games, but now I make games for my daughter, Yaela, and she loves to share them with others!

When she started to enjoy math, I designed Monsters in the Elevator with Yaela to help her build math confidence and to learn and practice important skills like estimation and arithmetic. Yaela has been play testing my games for years, and she was very excited to be involved in this project. She named many of the monsters, decided which art should go with which weight, and created the Advanced Play mode by suggesting we mix up the Floors to remove the carefully crafted pacing, and place the Floors face-down to remove the ability to plan for the next Floor, creating far more intense gameplay experiences!

We have play tested the game for many months and found kids love the cute Monsters and the excitement of trying to survive each round. Parents love watching their kids get into the calculations to see if the weight is too much on each Floor, and to measure the impact of their choices throughout the game.

We have a fantastic support team of three senior students from The New England Institute of Art: Madeleine Bracket, Jeannie Holmes, and Anna Giannuzzi, who are helping us run demos, design marketing materials, and generally saving the day behind the scenes.