What We’re Building at Iconic Games: Educational Games Made in Aotearoa

Iconic Games is a Māori-owned games and educational technology company in Aotearoa New Zealand.

We are building educational games, multiplayer experiences and digital learning products around one central idea:

Learning should not feel like something that has been added on top of a game. The learning should live inside what the player is actually doing.

That distinction shapes everything from Mīharo: Escape the Arcade and The Showdown to Te Reo Quest, Mīharo Kura, Mīharo Ahau and the worlds we are developing for the future.

We are still early. That matters, because this Journal is not intended to present a finished company pretending to have every answer. It is a place to document what we are building, why we are building it, what research is influencing the design and what we learn along the way.

Why build educational games in New Zealand?

Aotearoa already has a history of educators and researchers exploring what games can contribute to learning.

The New Zealand Council for Educational Research’s Games for Learning project investigated digital and non-digital gameplay, game design and gamification in New Zealand schools. Its purpose was not to assume that games are automatically educational, but to examine what happens when games become part of learning environments and how they can support transformative learning opportunities for diverse learners.

That distinction matters.

A 2025 meta-analysis of digital game-based learning and problem-solving found a positive overall effect, but also substantial variation between studies. Games combined with relevant teaching strategies produced stronger effects than games used alone.

In other words, the evidence does not say: games equal learning.

It says design matters.

That is one of the principles shaping Iconic Games.

Mīharo: Escape the Arcade — collaboration as the mechanic

Escape the Arcade is a cooperative browser game designed for two players on two devices.

Players do not simply sit beside one another answering identical questions. They receive different information. One player may have something the other needs, which means they have to describe what they see, listen, compare information and solve the problem together.

The communication is not an optional extra.

It is how the game works.

Rather than telling players, “Now practise collaboration,” we can build a situation where they cannot progress without collaborating.

That is the kind of learning design that interests us most: where the mechanic itself creates a reason to use the capability.

Mīharo: The Showdown — learning that feels like entertainment

The Showdown explores a different form of play.

It is designed more like a multiplayer television game show than a conventional educational platform. Players use their phones while the shared game runs on the main screen. There is timing, competition, reaction and the social energy that comes from playing together.

The bigger experiment is simple:

Can a learning experience be entertaining enough that people would choose it even if nobody told them it was educational?

Game-based learning is not the same thing as placing animation around a worksheet. Aotearoa research has treated games for learning much more broadly, including gameplay, game design and gamification.

We want that broader interpretation too.

Te Reo Quest — practising language through interaction

Te Reo Quest is being developed around language learning.

Its early form is already being explored publicly through short-form content where we practise vocabulary, sentence patterns, pronunciation and repeated structures. But the long-term goal is bigger than multiple-choice translation.

A language game becomes much more interesting when understanding the language helps the player accomplish something.

Imagine needing to understand a direction to find a destination, listening to an instruction, selecting an object an NPC asked for, or using language to interact with another character.

The aim is to move progressively from recognising language towards using language with purpose.

We are also deliberately learning in public. Feedback from real people can shape the eventual product rather than waiting until launch to discover what learners actually need.

Mīharo Kura — game-based learning for schools and kura

Mīharo Kura is our longer-term learning pathway for schools, kura and homeschool contexts.

That requires a different level of responsibility.

A product describing itself as curriculum-aligned cannot reference the curriculum once and then remain unchanged forever. Aotearoa’s national curriculum is currently undergoing substantial change. The complete Years 0–10 New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa are planned for publication by 9 September 2026, with implementation phased across different learning areas and year levels through 2030.

That means curriculum alignment must be ongoing work.

The challenge for us is not:

How do we turn the curriculum into a giant quiz?

It is:

What kinds of game experiences could allow learners to practise knowledge, capabilities and problem-solving in meaningful contexts?

That question deserves time, testing and partnership.

Mīharo Ahau — learning beyond the classroom

Mīharo Ahau begins with a different learner.

Not everybody’s learning journey fits neatly inside school or tertiary education. People leave school early. People return later. People need practical knowledge. People want to understand money, business, technology, communication, languages, trades or everyday systems without necessarily entering a conventional course.

Ahau is being developed around that wider idea of independent, practical learning.

The ambition is to create a world where gaining knowledge changes what the learner is capable of doing inside that world.

Instead of disconnected lessons, progress should increasingly feel like:

I learned something, so now I can do something I could not do before.

Country to Coastline — making Aotearoa feel like Aotearoa

Not every Iconic Games project looks like an obvious educational product.

Country to Coastline is an Aotearoa town-building game currently in development. The player begins with their own piece of New Zealand and gradually develops it.

But designing a New Zealand game creates an interesting challenge. It is easy to make a generic game world and decorate it with recognisable New Zealand symbols.

That is not the same thing as making a world actually feel like Aotearoa.

The roads matter. The fences matter. The vegetation matters. Small towns matter. Language matters. Cultural knowledge matters.

And where Māori knowledge, narratives or taonga are involved, relationships and appropriate expertise matter too.

What AI changes for a small New Zealand game studio

Artificial intelligence is changing what a very small development team can attempt.

We are experimenting with AI-assisted coding, research, testing and development workflows. That does not mean AI builds Iconic Games while humans watch.

AI can produce mistakes. It can generate poor code. It can misunderstand instructions. It can confidently produce information that is wrong.

Human judgement remains necessary.

But used carefully, AI can give a small company leverage that historically required much larger technical teams.

For small creative and educational technology businesses in places like Aotearoa, that could be significant.

We are not trying to gamify worksheets

This is probably the most important distinction in our work.

There is a version of educational technology where learning remains almost exactly the same:

Read something. Answer a question. Receive points. Watch some confetti. Repeat.

Sometimes that is useful.

But it is not the limit of what educational games can become.

If a learner is developing entrepreneurship skills, perhaps they should operate something.

If they are learning mathematics, perhaps the numbers should determine whether something they are building actually works.

If they are developing communication skills, perhaps another player genuinely depends on the information they provide.

If they are learning a language, perhaps understanding that language should allow them to navigate the world.

The game should give knowledge a purpose.

Where Iconic Games is heading

These projects look very different from one another.

That is intentional.

Iconic Games is not trying to produce twenty versions of the same educational quiz.

We are interested in a bigger design question:

What could learning become if we started with the experience?

Sometimes the answer may be a cooperative puzzle. Sometimes a party game. Sometimes a simulation. Sometimes a story. Sometimes a whole world.

And sometimes the right answer may not be a game at all.

The important thing is that the design serves the learner rather than the technology.

We are still testing. Still building. Still changing things.

That is part of the point.

We want to document the journey while it is happening, because Iconic Games is not only interested in making educational games in New Zealand.

We want to help explore what game-based learning from Aotearoa could become.

Play. Learn. Grow.