Hoard Keeper
A SQL game for teens and beginners. The Dragon King asks about his treasure, and you answer by building a little machine. That machine is a SQL query, and the game will show it to you.
Tell me when it's outAndroid first. iPhone later.Free. Nothing to buy, and it works offline. Ages 13 and up.
“How many storm crowns are in my vault?”
Shine the lantern around. The pieces his question needs light up. That's a WHERE clause: it keeps the rows you asked for and skips the rest.
Found 0 of 4
SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM vault
WHERE element = 'storm'
AND kind = 'crown';The machine is the query
Nobody types code. You snap parts together, and each part is a piece of SQL. Tap Show the scroll any time and the game writes your machine out for you.
A sieve
WHERELets some pieces through and stops the rest.
Sieves in a row, or one flipped
AND, OR, NOTStorm and a crown. Fire or frost. Anything but gems.
The bucket
COUNT, SUM, MAX, AVGCounts what got through, adds it up, finds the biggest or the average.
Record books
columnsThe vault only remembers what you built a book for. If the King asks about something you never wrote down, the honest answer is Can't tell.
Sixteen seasons, one new idea at a time
Each season adds one thing, and you feel the problem before the game hands you the fix.
Tribute Day Seasons 1 to 4
Count it, add it up, find the biggest, sort it by kind.
COUNT · SUM · MAX · GROUP BYThe Muddy Road Seasons 5 to 8
Build record books, clean up muddy treasure, and catch the Mimics pretending to be real pieces.
columns · cleaning data · duplicatesThe Busy Sky Seasons 9 to 12
The King starts shouting questions mid-Rush. Then you fix an apprentice's broken machine, and learn or and not.
AND · OR · NOTThe Kingdom Seasons 13 to 16
A second book of dragon names and ages, a new column halfway through, the pit, and the Final Audit. By then you can fix a machine from the SQL alone.
JOIN · a new column · reading SQL
Why SQL
SQL is how people ask questions of data, and it has been since the 1970s. It looks scary on paper. It's a lot less scary once you've used it to count dragon gold.
Hoard Keeper teaches the thinking first, with sieves and buckets you can see, and the words come along with it.
Questions
Is it real SQL?
Yes. Tap Show the scroll and the game writes your machine out as SQL, the same language data teams use every day: SELECT, WHERE, COUNT, GROUP BY, JOIN.
Do I need to know any code first?
No. You play with sieves and buckets. The SQL is there to read whenever you want it, and the later seasons lean on it more.
Is SQL too hard for a beginner?
Not if they start with the idea instead of the typing. You never type a query in Hoard Keeper. You build one out of sieves and a bucket, see what it catches, and read the SQL when you're ready.
How is it different from other SQL games?
A lot of SQL games run in a browser and have you type queries from the first screen. Hoard Keeper is a phone game that works offline, and you build queries with your hands long before you read one.
Who is it for?
Teens 13 and up, beginners who'd rather play than drill, and grown-ups who like a puzzle.
What does it cost?
Nothing. There's nothing to buy. Between seasons you'll sometimes see a card for one of our other games, and that's the only ad.
Does it need the internet?
No. On Android the app doesn't even have permission to use it.
Is it on iPhone?
Not yet. Android comes first.
The King is waiting.
His vault won't count itself.
Tell me when it's out