Game Development for Education

Curriculum-aligned, accessible, and built to engage learners. We create educational games for universities, publishers, and schools. Our team has prior experience working with Cambridge University Press, the BBC, and London Museum through previous employment.

Summary

Who it's for: Universities, publishers, schools and research consortia commissioning an educational or serious game.
What you get: A game design document (GDD) mapped to your learning objectives, a playable prototype tested with learners, and a build tested on your agreed devices with WCAG 2.2 Level AA as the accessibility target.
Typical timeline: A playable prototype typically takes 6 to 8 weeks, and full production 3 to 6 months, depending on scope.
Next step: Tell us about your learners, curriculum and devices. We reply within 1 to 2 business days.

Designed Around Your Institution

From fully standalone educational games to gamified learning modules that integrate into your existing digital curriculum, we design interactive experiences around learning objectives and agree how to evaluate engagement. We build educational games and serious games for universities, publishers, and research consortia.

Discuss your project

Your curriculum, available devices and reporting requirements shape what a learning game needs to do. We start with teaching objectives, accessibility needs, content ownership and the systems your institution already uses. We scope curriculum alignment, accessibility and device support with your team, alongside privacy, data handling, languages and any learning management system (LMS) integration. The agreement identifies ownership of bespoke content and licences for existing tools and third-party components. See our educational game development service for our approach.

Find the right way to work together

Prepare your educational game brief

Work through stakeholders, curriculum input, discovery outputs, pilot testing and acceptance criteria, then adapt a printable worksheet with your team.

Use the commissioning checklist

See language learning games in action

Read how David, as a freelance contractor, made nine vocabulary mini-games for The Language Conservancy, used across 14 published language apps.

Read the Vocab Builder case study

Explore educational game development

See our full approach to curriculum-aligned design, accessibility, privacy and LMS integration.

View the service

Featured Work

Case Studies

Vocab Builder

Playable Learning for Endangered Languages

Nine vocabulary mini-games for endangered and Indigenous languages, built by David Edgecombe as a freelance contractor for The Language Conservancy.

Educational
Serious Games
EdTech

Read Case Study

Navigo

Engineering an Award-Winning Language Learning Adventure

How Adam's team at a previous agency built Navigo, a Serious Games Society award winner with 15 mini-games across four languages for the EU iRead project.

Educational
Multi-Language
Serious Games
Award-Winning

Read Case Study

Our Team's Track Record

Work from our team’s previous roles at leading studios and agencies.

Non-Profit

Publisher

Broadcaster

Research Consortium

Built for Institutional Requirements

Curriculum-Aligned Design

Your learners stay on-syllabus. Every game mechanic ties directly to your learning objectives, so classroom time spent playing is classroom time spent learning.

Privacy & Data Handling

Each project is designed around the institution's confirmed privacy, data-handling and consent requirements, with data collection and third-party tracking kept to the necessary minimum.

Multi-Language Support

We plan for the languages and writing systems your project needs, with translation responsibilities and testing agreed during scoping.

Planned Around Your Hardware

We assess your existing devices early and agree a supported hardware list before development. Performance testing targets the devices and browsers your learners will use.

Connects to Your LMS

Where reporting integration is required, we scope it against your actual LMS, learner data and reporting requirements before development begins.

Accessibility Planned From the Start

We agree accessibility requirements with your team, using WCAG 2.2 Level AA as the reference point, and test the relevant interactions on the target devices. It is a target we implement and test against, not a conformance certificate. Text, colour, controls and assistive technology support are considered against your learners' needs and the agreed scope.

How It Works for Institutions

Curriculum & Learning Design Workshop
We sit down with your pedagogical team to map learning objectives, target age groups, and assessment criteria. The output is a GDD aligned to your syllabus.
Prototype & Pedagogy Validation
We build a playable prototype, typically in 6 to 8 weeks, and test it with a small learner group. Feedback from students and teachers shapes the core loop, the activity learners repeat throughout the game, before full production begins.
Development & Accessibility Testing
We develop in Unity or HTML5, testing against the supported device list and the agreed accessibility requirements, with WCAG 2.2 Level AA as the reference point. Privacy and data-handling reviews run throughout. Full production typically takes 3 to 6 months, depending on scope.
Deployment & LMS Integration
We handle app store submission, web hosting, or mobile device management (MDM) distribution. Where progress reporting is required, we integrate with the institution's agreed LMS or reporting interface after confirming its technical requirements.

Services for your project

Educational Game Development

We design and build educational games for publishers, universities and museums. Turn your learning objectives into a browser or mobile game. Discuss your project.

Explore service

Legacy Game Modernisation

Upgrade older Unity projects or rebuild legacy games for modern platforms. UK engineers assess dependencies, preserve gameplay and plan a tested migration.

Explore service

App Store Launch Support

App Store and Google Play launch support for Unity games. Build checks, store listings, test releases and help resolving submission review issues.

Explore service

Game Design Services

Game design services covering core mechanics, progression, game design documents and Unity prototypes. Turn your concept into a practical production plan.

Explore service

What our clients say

“David is very patient and has great communication. He is an appropriately skilled freelance Unity developer who understood our project goals from the beginning and worked with us diligently throughout our slow-burn design process. I am pleased that we chose David to develop version 2.0 of our Vocab Builder. Thanks David!”

Educational app development

Logan

Lead Producer, The Language Conservancy

Project: Vocab Builder

If your project is for a museum, gallery, or heritage site, you may also want to explore our museums and cultural heritage page.

If your project is corporate training or L&D rather than academic education, see our corporate training page.

Frequently Asked Questions

We work directly with your subject matter experts from day one. Every gameplay mechanic, challenge, and reward loop is mapped to specific learning objectives in your curriculum framework. We produce a detailed game design document that links each feature to measurable learning outcomes before development begins.

We design around the audience, data collected and requirements confirmed by the institution. For children's titles, that can include data minimisation, age-appropriate consent flows, high-privacy defaults and careful review of third-party software development kits (SDKs). Where a UK service is likely to be accessed by children, we work from the ICO's Children's Code. Legal and compliance requirements are agreed with the client rather than assumed to apply identically to every project.

A playable prototype typically takes 6 to 8 weeks, and full production typically takes 3 to 6 months, depending on scope. The first deliverable is a game design document mapped to your learning objectives, followed by the prototype for testing with a small learner group, then the production build tested on your agreed devices.

WCAG 2.2 Level AA is our reference point for educational projects. We implement and test against it as a target on the devices your learners will use, rather than issuing a conformance certificate. Specific requirements, such as screen reader support, are agreed with your team during scoping. See the W3C overview of WCAG for the standard itself.

Share the devices, operating systems and browsers your institution uses. We assess their suitability and agree a supported hardware list before development, then test against that list. If a device cannot support the planned experience, we discuss changes to the scope or hardware before you commit.

We understand institutional procurement. We can work with purchase orders, provide W-8BEN/W-9 forms for international clients, accommodate multi-stage approval processes, and deliver against milestone-based contracts. We have experience working with university procurement departments and public sector frameworks.

Yes, this is one of our specialities. Our team has converted Flash-based educational games to HTML5 and Unity, preserving gameplay fidelity while adding modern features like mobile support, accessibility, and LMS integration. See our Fire of London case study, David’s rebuild for London Museum in a previous role. For a full overview of our approach, see our legacy modernisation service.

Start with what you want people to learn

Tell us what you want people to learn or explore, who the audience is and what content, research or funding you already have in place.

Describe your learners

Discuss your learning project

Tell us about your learners, curriculum needs, devices and approval process. We'll discuss the practical requirements for your institution.

Location

London, United Kingdom

Response Time

We typically respond within 1 to 2 business days.

Game Development for Education

Curriculum-aligned, accessible, and built to engage learners. We create educational games for universities, publishers, and schools. Our team has prior experience working with Cambridge University Press, the BBC, and London Museum through previous employment.

Summary

Designed Around Your Institution