Award-Winning Multi-Language Learning Game - Navigo Case Study

Navigo is an ambitious tablet-based learning game designed to support children learning English, German, Spanish, or Greek as a first language. Developed by our team at fish in a bottle alongside a major European research consortium, the game complements traditional classroom teaching through an engaging narrative and a wide range of interactive game mechanics. Working closely with over a dozen educational and technical institutions across Europe, we translated pedagogical research and language-learning guidance into 15 distinct mini-games. Each was focused on teaching key principles of early language development - from phonics and grammar to sentence construction and reading comprehension. Research-Driven Design: Unlike commercial game development, every design decision required validation against educational outcomes. University partners provided learning objectives; we engineered the gameplay mechanics to achieve them. Adaptive Difficulty: The game collected comprehensive data on player performance and used it to dynamically adjust the difficulty of content being taught, ensuring each child was challenged at an appropriate level. Multi-Language Architecture: Supporting four languages was not simply a localisation task. Each language has different grammatical structures, phonetic systems, and pedagogical approaches. The game architecture needed to accommodate fundamentally different learning mechanics per language. The dedication paid off: Navigo received an award from the Serious Games Society in the Digital Game Competition, alongside glowing reviews from focus testers and participating schools.