❄️ Ice Maze - Sentence Builder

📚 About This Game

Ice Maze is an educational game designed to help students learn sentence structure through the Colourful Semantics approach. Players navigate a maze, collecting words in the correct order to build grammatically correct sentences.

🎨 What is Colourful Semantics?

Colourful Semantics is a teaching method that uses colours to help children understand sentence structure:

• WHO (Orange) - The person or thing doing the action
• WHAT DOING (Yellow) - The action or verb
• WHAT (Green) - The object of the action
• WHERE (Blue) - The location
• HOW (Purple) - The manner or way
• WHEN (Brown) - The time
• JOINING (Black) - Connecting words like "the", "a", "in"

⚙️ Game Configuration Options

Before starting, you can customize the game difficulty:

• Starting Stage: Choose from 8 progressive stages (1-8)
• Time Limit: Set challenge level
  • 30 seconds - 3.0x score multiplier (+10s per word) 🔥
  • 60 seconds - 2.0x score multiplier (+5s per word) ⚡
  • 2 minutes - 1.0x score multiplier (standard) ⏱️
  • Untimed - 0.5x score multiplier (practice mode) 🎯
• Guard Count (0-5): Moving obstacles (+50 points each at start) 👾
• Wall Trap Count (0-10): Crushing walls (+30 points each at start) 🧱
• Hints: Enable/disable lightbulb hints (+100 points if disabled) 💡

🎮 How to Play

• Desktop: Use arrow keys or WASD to move
• Mobile/Tablet: Tap directional buttons on screen
• Goal: Collect words in the correct order to build the target sentence
• Avoid: Guards (red) and crushing walls (blue)
• Lives: You start with 5 lives. Wrong word? Back to start, lose 1 life!
• Hints: If enabled, walk over the lightbulb (💡) to see the next word flash

� Scoring System

• Base Points: 50 points per correct word
• Time Bonus: Extra points for completing quickly
• Difficulty Bonuses:
  • Guards: +50 points each (awarded at start)
  • Wall Traps: +30 points each (awarded at start)
  • Hints Disabled: +100 points (awarded at start)
• Score Multipliers: Based on time limit chosen (see above)

� The 8 Stages

• Stage 1: Sentence Sparks - WHO + WHAT DOING (e.g., "The boy runs")
• Stage 2: Action Builders - WHO + WHAT DOING + WHAT (e.g., "The boy kicks the ball")
• Stage 3: Scene Setters - Add WHERE (e.g., "The boy kicks the ball in the garden")
• Stage 4: Detail Boosters - Add HOW (e.g., "The boy kicks the ball in the garden hard")
• Stage 5: Time Travellers - Add WHEN (e.g., "The boy kicks the ball in the garden hard today")
• Stage 6: Story Expanders - Longer sentences with all elements
• Stage 7: Meaning Makers - Complex sentences with multiple clauses
• Stage 8: Confident Communicators - Advanced sentence structures

🎯 Learning Objectives

• Understanding sentence structure and word order
• Recognizing semantic roles of words
• Building grammatically correct sentences
• Developing reading comprehension skills
• Improving vocabulary and language awareness

💡 Tips for Teachers

• Start Simple: Begin with 0 guards, 0 traps, and hints enabled for new learners
• Gradual Challenge: Increase difficulty as students master sentence structure
• Time Pressure: Use shorter time limits for advanced students to build fluency
• Discuss Mistakes: Use incorrect attempts as teaching moments
• Celebrate Success: Acknowledge progress through the stages

💻 Free & Open Source

This project is free and open source! You can have a look at the source code, it won't bite.

https://github.com/jamesabela/icemaze

You can also learn more about Vibe coding by reading my book and you can also read my Gamification book too.

👩‍🏫 Interested in Teaching Vocab?

We represent a growing community of educators. If you'd like to get involved, please let us know!