A student gave me the idea, so I made a maths fishing game

13 August 2026 · by Larry

One of my students told me about frenzy fishing. I did not have much to add. I just listened.

They were not talking about maths at all. But it stayed with me, and after a while I realised practice has a similar shape if you squint at it. You do a little bit of work, and then something happens. We usually leave out the second half.

So I built Fish Lab

It is one of the simplest things I have made. You answer a sum, and answering it lets you cast your line. Then a light moves along the line, and you tap when it is in the light. Time it well and you land the fish. Ten casts and the trip is over.

You pick your own level, P1 to P6, so the sums are ones you can actually do. Your catches get weighed and go into your tank, and there are twelve different fish to find. That is the whole game.

What I deliberately left out matters more to me. No ads. No sign-up. Nothing to buy. And no rare-fish gambling — you cannot pay for a better chance at anything, because that mechanic is designed to hook children and I am not putting it in front of them.

The idea was theirs, and I want to be clear about that

I did not have this idea. A child did, while talking about something they enjoy. I am the one who knew how to build it, which is a much smaller contribution than it sounds.

I mention it because it is how most of the good changes here have arrived. Someone says something offhand — a student, my own kids, a parent tapping the feedback button — and it turns out to be better than what I had planned on my own.

Tell me what is wrong with it

Fish Lab is not finished. I am still working on it, and I would rather hear the awkward version than the polite one. Too hard, too easy, the timing feels off, my child got bored after three casts, the fish are boring — all of that is useful, and none of it hurts my feelings.

When someone tells me something, I work on it straight away. That is not a promise about how good the game is. It is a promise about what happens after you say something. There is a feedback button on every page and it comes directly to me.

I do not know if anyone will play it

I genuinely do not. It might be a handful of children, the way the last one was. That is fine. I will keep making them anyway, and keep fixing them when someone tells me what is wrong, and if a few children have a good ten minutes and come away a bit quicker at their sums, that is a good enough reason to have built it.

And if your child likes it, say so — I will pass it on to the student whose idea it was.

— Larry