Marvel Hero Tales helps kids practice and improve the following skills:

Self-Awareness

Understanding our own actions, thoughts and feelings.

While most games have some aspect of being self-aware (through being aware of the main character’s, or “self’s”, surroundings), this game also practices being aware of and expressing thoughts and feelings. Every time the user has to interact with a character or object in the app, the user has to practice thinking about what they want to do (attack or question, for example). Then they have to decide how they want to do it (confidently or cautiously). Finally, they have to express their thoughts by putting together a sentence. How they express these thoughts impacts what happens next. To move the game forward they have to use their self-awareness skills.

Working Memory

Recalling and retaining information in our minds while working.

This app also uses a few different working memory skills. First, it’s important that the user work on improving their forgetfulness and their visual memory by remembering where in the game they have explored. If they can’t remember where they have been, they will miss out on tokens that give them new skills, or they may miss out on story locations. They also have to work on improving forgetfulness by remembering what words mean and where they make sense in a sentence, as well as what sentences they have already used. If they can’t remember these things, they could run out of moves and fail to advance the story.