SUMAbout Sumburst
A group of us met over a shared liking for maths. A few could code. We played a lot of the maths games already out there and found them wanting, so we built the one we wanted.
- Games
- Four, all free
- Worksheets
- Grades 1 to 12
- Ages
- Roughly 6 to 16
- Adverts
- None, ever
- Downloads
- Nothing to install
- Cost
- Free to start, no card
How it started
The games we tried tended to fall into two camps: a quiz with a cartoon stuck on the front, or a real game interrupted by adverts every ninety seconds. Neither is much use when the person playing is eight.
So we sketched what we actually wanted. Proper arcade games, progress you can see, and tools that take work off teachers rather than adding to it. That became Sumburst.
Why maths, and why games
Because we like maths and would like more people to. That is the whole reason the games are built the way they are.
In Slice Rush you cannot serve a customer without reading the fraction on their ticket. In Kingdom Math Defender the towers do not upgrade until you have answered. Twenty minutes of play is a couple of hundred questions, and it never feels like practice.
Three groups, from day one
This only works if it satisfies three quite different people at once. Build for one and you lose the other two.
For kidsA game, not homework
If it feels like a worksheet with sound effects they will not come back. It has to be worth playing on its own.
For parentsSomewhere safe
No adverts, no chat with strangers, nothing to buy to win, and a straight answer about what their child is learning.
For teachersLess work, not more
Class accounts without an email address per child, a grade setting for the whole group, and a view of who is stuck.
What we will not do
- No adverts. Not now, not later.
- No loot boxes, and nothing you can buy that makes one child better at the game than a child whose family cannot pay.
- Coins are cosmetic and stay in the game that earned them.
- Anything involving money sits behind a parent gate.
- The free account is a real account, not a trial that quietly runs out.
Where we are now
Launched and busy. Four arcade games are working, the worksheet library covers grades 1 to 12, and most of what we build this month comes from what parents, teachers and students tell us.
Next: more games, better analytics so a class dashboard says something useful, and learning paths that adjust to a child as they go instead of asking someone to pick a level and hope.
Say hello
We read everything, and a fair bit of what is on the site now started as an email from someone using it. Worth writing in about:
Found a bugTell us what broke
What you were doing, what happened, and which game and device. A screenshot helps more than anything else.
Got an ideaSuggest something
A game you would like, a topic we have missed, or something that would make a lesson easier. We keep a list and work through it.
Teaching a classAsk about schools
Class accounts, seats, or trying it with one group first. Say roughly how many students and what you want them working on.
Email support@sumburst.com and a person will reply, usually within a day or two. Account or billing questions go faster if you send them from the address on the account.