Coding has always been one of those hard skills in life that I want to pick up. It just seems so useful. Quite literally like learning a new language, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities, allowing you to design—or at the very least, customise—your own websites or software.
Yet, just like learning a new language, I’ve never actually carved out time for it. I’m sure you all get it. Life is busy, and in your free time, you just want to unwind.
But what if you can learn code while unwinding with a game?
Soon you will be able to through Pastopia, a roleplay game created by homegrown startup Quurk.
A quurky business with a serious goal
It all started when Marvin Das, CEO of Quurk, met his co-founder, August.
“Like me, [August] felt the future of classrooms and gaming could seamlessly intertwine with a product that abstracts, adapts, and amalgamates critical aspects of learning into gameplay to deliver a truly convergent experience,” he told Vulcan Post.
With this shared belief, they founded Quurk in June 2022.
The aim was to deliver highly-evolved gaming experiences that not only entertain players, but also equip them with veritable digital skills like Python programming and mastery of AI and machine learning.
To do this, Quurk goes beyond the typical rigour of game development, making use of new emerging technologies, content abstraction, and puzzle design.
“This is defined in our proprietary content abstraction methodology that was developed to create compelling and practical exercises in the form of challenges and puzzles, interwoven with a layered storyline,” Marvin elaborated.
The team is also developing their own ASI (Artificial Specialised Intelligence) to support text-to-code. It’ll also eventually incorporate speech-to-code environments, which Marvin said will be a “flywheel for our core UGC (user-generated content) economy.”
Not just your typical game
All of Quurk’s ambitions and efforts have culminated in a game called Pastopia.
An open-world action-adventure game, Pastopia combines AI and real-world learning in an immersive and socialised experience. Users can learn and apply real-world coding skills like Python to build new in-game assets and create new worlds.
In its storyline and art direction, Pastopia pays homage to beloved games like “The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild” and “Minecraft”.
The intention was to create a highly-stylised and engaging gameplay, using technology like AI while offering intricately-designed puzzles abstracted with cognitive learning methodologies. With that, the team seeks to offer a uniquely immersive and educational game.
But you might be wondering—is it lame? If you grew up in the era of educational computer games, you’ll know that sometimes these games are more educational than entertaining, which ultimately defeats the purpose due to the low playability.
To that, Marvin said, “In Pastopia, you’ll experience pure gameplay first, with the actual learning imbued into the immersive story-driven world without ever feeling intrusive or obtrusive.”
That’s their reason for choosing an open-world RPG format. Marvin believes this provides a level of autonomy for the player through the joys of explorative play, making it ideal for embedding coding challenges in a way that feels organic and engaging, but never contrived.
The game features two core “game loops”—one around immersive story-driven progression, and the other on an economic engine that rewards world-building, thus encouraging in-game UGC with Python.
Pastopia also has a built-in AI learning assistant, augmented by a dedicated RAG architecture (retrieval augmented generation). This architecture allows the AI to be far more precise and specific to the game.
Currently, it teaches two coding languages—Miniscript and Python.
The game was first for all players aged 7 and above, but results from their playtest campaign and focus group studies show that the primary user segment is likely coming from players between the age of 7 to 16 years.
Monetising the game
Seed funding aside, how does the team plan to monetise?
Well, it’s pretty straightforward—through an individual licence purchased over Steam with seasonal DLCs planned ahead.
“Separately, we do conduct direct sales for bulk purchases for schools and enterprises,” Marvin added.
Marvin shared that they’re currently acquiring customers via digital ads, and brick-and-mortar business development work.
“While this needs to be more aggressive, our goal is to lower cost of acquisition by also collaborating with key partners on-ground to run activations and cross promotions i.e. with a mall partner to do a series of roadshows supported by an IT hardware partner,” he said.
From stealth to (hopefully) wealth
Having been building Pastopia for about two years now, Quurk has been mainly operating in “stealth”.
“We’ve been relatively low profile up till the award win,” Marvin said.
He’s referring to the Best Technology award they bagged at the SEA Games Award. The award was a confidence boost for the team as well as a recognition of the efforts they’ve put in for the past two years.
“We’re eager to build on the early validation and recognition, focus our energies in creating a stronger product with a deeply-engaged community that can help propel learning and gaming into a convergent realm of highly evolved experiences,” Marvin determined.
Pastopia is now available to wishlist on Steam, and is slated to launch at the end of Q1 2025.
With that, the Quurk team is focused on ensuring their Wishlist campaign is a success, so that they can translate that into a greater percentage of paid users.
“To achieve this, we’re focused on a robust three-prong strategy on product education, grassroots collaborations, and hands-on experiences across digital and IRL mediums,” they said.
In the bigger picture, though, the vision is to introduce their UGC economy, much akin to Minecraft and Roblox. This will allow players to express their creativity—and intellect—to code their own worlds in Pastopia.
Featured Image Credit: Quurk