An upgrade gets an upgrade

Almost three years ago when Gimkit launched, it had the same four upgrades in the shop today: Money Per Question, Streak Bonus, Multiplier, and Insurance.

We've added some additional levels and changed the pricing a bit, but the way these upgrades work has remained exactly the same. Well, today we're changing things up a bit. We're changing how Streak Bonus works.

Previously, the streak bonus kicked in only when you answered two questions correctly in a row.

Now it stacks. So you'll get an additional bonus on your second question answered correctly, and then another bonus on your third, fourth, and so on.

If you get one question wrong, your streak resets to zero. The more accurate you are, the more you earn and the more you have to lose.

The Streak Bar shows your potential future earnings if you continue to answer questions correctly.

So, why did we make this change?

Progression

With the old streak bonus, you reached your maximum amount of money earned per question at two questions correct. This meant long stretches of game could go on where you were just earning the same amount of money.

Now that the bonus stacks, you're earning more and more every single question. It helps students feel they're constantly working towards something!

Reward Accuracy over Speed

One of the core design decisions of Gimkit has been to reward accuracy over speed. It's why we've never awarded more money for questions answered quickly.

With this change, you start to earn the big bucks by answering questions correctly in a row. But remember, one incorrect answer and your streak resets back to zero. This helps incentivizes students to slow down and think about the question before answering.

Underdogs

This new streak bonus change also allows students who aren't typically the best shoppers to place higher on the leaderboard.

In a few simulations we ran, there were quite a few scenarios where a student that was more accurate, but had worse upgrades still won the game. Of course strategy is still an important piece to winning Gimkit, but this allows other ways to win as well.

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That's the new change to streak bonus, and it's available right now! We're just a team of three, and changes like this don't always correlate well when played with a class of thirty.

So, send us you and your student's feedback! We've got lots of things we can tweak like the pricing of upgrades and how effective they are.

Thanks for your support and stay tuned — we've got a lot of exciting game changes ahead!