Custom serious gaming app development
A serious game is not e-learning with a scoreboard bolted on. It is a game in which the player makes decisions and experiences the consequences, so that behaviour is trained rather than knowledge simply being transferred. Appfront builds custom serious games and simulations, and ensures that what the player does is measurably captured in your learning environment.
What is a serious gaming app?
A serious gaming app is a game built to teach or practise rather than to entertain. The player is presented with a situation, makes decisions and experiences the consequences within the game. That makes it suitable for subjects where knowing what to do is not the same as actually doing it: safety, customer conversations, crisis decision-making, process operation and teamwork under time pressure.
The heart of the design is translating the learning objective into a game mechanic. This is the part most often skipped. Anyone who builds a quiz with points trains people to recognise the right answer. If you want someone to prioritise under pressure, that pressure has to be built into the game: incomplete information, a ticking clock, consequences that only become visible later. The mechanic must reflect the learning objective, otherwise the game trains something other than what was intended.
This page is about the game itself. If you are looking for the environment in which courses are assigned, followed and reported, see custom LMS software or the SCORM-compliant learning environment. If it concerns regular course content on mobile, developing an e-learning app is more suitable.
Learning objective first, game second
We start with the behaviour that needs to change and design the mechanic around it. That determines whether it becomes a simulation, a dilemma game, a time-pressure scenario or a teamwork exercise, and not the other way around.
Behaviour that can be measured
A serious game generates richer data than a test: which choice was made, at what moment, after how much hesitation, and with what consequence. We capture these events as individual statements, so you can see where people drop off or get stuck.
Debrief as part of the design
Learning happens in the review. We therefore build a closing stage that shows the choices made alongside their consequences, useful for self-reflection or as a starting point for a group discussion with a trainer.
How we build your serious gaming app
A serious game that doesn't work has usually not failed on technology but on design. We therefore invest early in playable prototypes, even ones that barely resemble a game yet.
Together with your instructional designers, we determine which behaviour needs to be trained, how you currently measure whether that is succeeding, and which real-world situations are the most decisive. This produces the scenarios around which the game is built.
We design the mechanic, the difficulty progression and the feedback moments, and test these first on paper or in a simple clickable version. Only once the mechanic truly addresses the learning objective do we start building.
We build in short iterations and let real participants play, not just the client. Playtests quickly reveal where people understand the game differently from how it was intended, something that is almost never visible on paper.
Rollout via your learning environment or as a standalone app, with learning data flowing into your learning record store. We then refine based on what the data shows about where players get stuck.
What a serious gaming app actually does
The set-up varies considerably by learning objective. These are the components we most often build for organisations that want to train behaviour.
Scenarios and branching
Situations drawn from your own practice, where the player's choices determine the rest of the story. Branching makes it visible that a decision has consequences that only surface later, which a linear course cannot achieve.
Simulation of a work situation
A recreated environment in which the player carries out tasks: a control panel, a floor plan, a conversation or a planning board. Particularly useful where mistakes are costly or dangerous in real life.
Progress and repetition
Levels, recall moments and increasing difficulty, so that the material is not simply ticked off in one session. For topics that recur every year, such as safety, that repetition is the core of the effect.
Measurement via xAPI
The app sends events as individual statements to a learning record store, following the actor, verb and object pattern. This records what happened in the game, even outside a browser or learning environment.
Integration with your learning environment
If the game needs to be launched from your LMS and report completion back there, we use cmi5. It combines the flexible recording of xAPI with the structure of launch, completion and result that an LMS expects.
Feedback and debriefing
A closing summary that sets choices and consequences side by side, either individually or for a group. Trainers can use this view as a starting point for the discussion afterwards, which is where much of the learning effect takes place.
Who we build serious gaming apps for
Serious gaming pays off most where practising on the job is difficult, expensive or risky. These are the situations we encounter most often.
Learning and development departments
In-house trainers who want mandatory training to reflect real working practice rather than a test. The game does not replace the learning environment but complements it; see also custom LMS software.
Security and compliance
Organisations with recurring mandatory training where box-ticking is a risk. A game in which a wrong choice has visible consequences works differently from a module with a final test. See also compliance training platform and security awareness training.
Education and assessment
Institutions that want to practise skills and assess abilities that are hard to capture in a written form, such as clinical reasoning, technical procedures or conversation skills.
Training agencies
Agencies that have their own methodology and want to capture it in a product they roll out to clients themselves. We describe the trade-off between building your own and choosing an off-the-shelf package in custom LMS versus off-the-shelf package.
Test your idea first: a working prototype in 1 day
With OneDayBuild, we turn your idea into something tangible in one day for €1,150, so you can see whether further development is worth the investment. Decide to go ahead with the full build? Then we credit the full cost.
Explore OneDayBuild →Technology and learning data standards
For 3D simulations and game mechanics we use a game engine such as Unity or Godot; for scenario and dilemma games a standard app or web stack is often faster and easier to maintain. The choice depends on what the game genuinely needs to do, not on what sounds most impressive.
For learning data, the default choice matters. SCORM, including the 2004 version, is tied to the browser and the learning environment and records little more than progress and score. xAPI captures individual events as statements in a learning record store, so it also works in an app, a simulation or a headset. If the game must be launched from an LMS and completed cleanly there, cmi5 is the bridge: it builds on xAPI and adds the structure an LMS expects. More about how we work: building an app and developing software.
Why choose Appfront for your serious game app?
Appfront builds custom software with smart technology and thoughtful design, working in design and development sprints. In a serious game, that design is decisive: the difference between a game that changes behaviour and one that is merely enjoyable lies in the mechanics, not the graphics.
That is why we work alongside your learning specialists or trainers rather than around them. They know which behaviours go wrong in practice; we know how to translate that into a game format that can be measured. We schedule playtests with real participants early, because on paper it is almost never clear how people will actually read a game.
The process begins with a no-obligation introductory conversation, followed by planning, development and maintenance. You see playable versions along the way, even if they are still rough, because that is when the design can still be adjusted.
See also our broader services: building an app, developing software and developing an e-learning app. Any questions? Get in touch with us.
- Custom serious games for iOS, Android and web
- Learning objectives translated into game mechanics, not the other way round
- Collaboration with your own learning specialists and trainers
- Playtests with real participants during development
- Learning data via xAPI to your learning record store
- cmi5 for launch and completion from your LMS
- Scenarios drawn from your own practice rather than generic cases
- Debriefing view for individual or group discussion
- Accessible interfaces and multilingual content
- Ongoing maintenance and further development
Privacy for learning data and gameplay behaviour
A serious game records detailed behaviour: which choice someone made, how long they took over it, and where things went wrong. That is exactly what makes the game valuable, and also the reason to be careful. This data concerns how employees perform and should not reach a line manager without agreed safeguards.
We therefore establish in advance which data is collected, who sees it at what level of detail, and how long it is kept. In many cases the right setup is: the participant sees their own results in full, the training department sees aggregated patterns, and individual scores are only shared further where explicit agreements have been made. We set up this processing in line with the GDPR.
Read more about our security approach: information security policy and vulnerability disclosure policy. Discuss your situation without obligation via our contact form.
- Learning data to be collected defined in advance
- Distinction between personal and aggregated access
- GDPR-compliant processing and retention periods
- Encryption in transit (TLS 1.2+) and at rest
- Role-based access to results
- Statements sent to your own learning record store
- Audit logging of access to results
- Accessibility built into the game design
Frequently asked questions about serious gaming
Answers to the questions we are asked most often about custom serious games and training simulations.
A serious game app is a game made to teach or practise something rather than to entertain. The player is presented with a situation, makes decisions and experiences the consequences within the game. That makes the format suitable for subjects where knowing what to do differs from actually doing it, such as safety, conversation skills and decision-making under pressure.
Gamification adds game elements such as points, badges and leaderboards to existing material; the game sits around the content, not within it. A serious game is itself the learning tool: the learning objective is built into the mechanics. E-learning focuses on knowledge transfer and assessment. In practice, organisations often combine the two, using the game for behaviour and the learning environment for knowledge and administration.
A serious game pays off when the desired behaviour depends on choices under uncertainty, time pressure or conflicting interests, and when practising on the job is difficult, expensive or risky. If the aim is mainly to convey facts or procedures that nobody disputes, a well-designed e-learning module is more efficient. We weigh this up in the first conversation, before anything is built.
Yes. If the game needs to be launched from your learning environment and reported back as completed there, we use cmi5. It is built on xAPI and adds the structure of launch, completion and result that an LMS expects. If the game runs independently of an LMS, for example as a phone app, we send the events directly as xAPI statements to a learning record store.
SCORM was designed for course material that runs in a browser within a learning environment, and it records little more than progress, score and completion. A serious game often takes place outside that context, on a phone or in a simulation, and generates far richer events than SCORM can capture. Hence xAPI, optionally with cmi5 if you wish to retain the LMS structure.
For 3D simulations and complex game mechanics we work with a game engine such as Unity or Godot. For scenario and dilemma games, a conventional app or web stack is often faster to build and easier to maintain, and it runs directly on any device. We decide which direction to take based on what the game genuinely needs to do.
By agreeing in advance what you will measure it against, and making that measurable within the game. Beyond completion, we look at choice patterns: which mistake is made most often, where people hesitate, and whether that improves with repetition. Those events are sent as statements to your learning record store, so you can track the effect rather than just participation.
We build custom. The value of a serious game lies in scenarios your participants recognise as their own work; a generic game with a different logo misses exactly that. Custom also means the game can grow with you: add new scenarios as practice changes, without rebuilding the entire product.
Ready to build your serious gaming app?
Tell us which behaviour you want to train and where current training falls short: people who pass the test but act differently in practice, or mandatory modules that get ticked off with no effect. We're happy to help think through the game format, measurability and integration with your learning environment. The first conversation is non-binding.