If you found your way here, there’s a good chance you loved Classcraft — and then lost it. When it was discontinued, a lot of teachers were suddenly without the thing that made their room hum. I’ve talked with enough teachers in that spot to know it stings. You didn’t just lose a piece of software; you lost a way of teaching that was working.

But here’s the first thing worth untangling, because it changes what you should go looking for: Classcraft was really two different tools wearing one costume.

There was the classroom-management layer most people picture — the RPG behavior system, where students had HP and powers and earned or lost points for how they acted. And then, in its final years, Classcraft leaned into Quests — actual self-paced learning pathways, where the game was the learning, not a reward stapled onto it.

I’ll be straight with you up front: what my team and I built is fundamentally different from the behavior-management side of Classcraft. It lives much closer to those Quests. So before you evaluate any replacement, the real question is which Classcraft you’re trying to replace.

So let me talk to you teacher-to-teacher for a minute about what to look for — assuming, like a lot of us, it’s the learning part you miss most.

1. Engagement that comes from the learning — not bolted onto it

The trap with a lot of “gamified” tools is that the game and the learning are two separate things: do the worksheet, get the points, maybe lose some HP if you talk out of turn. Students see through that fast. The engagement that actually lasts comes from three things researchers have been clear about for decades — autonomy (real choices), competence (visible progress you can feel), and relatedness (doing it alongside other people). That’s self-determination theory, and it’s the difference between a class that’s bribed and a class that’s bought in.

The Quests were the closest Classcraft got to that — a path a student actually moved through and owned. When you evaluate a replacement, ask whether it’s built around that, or whether it’s mostly a nicer way to track behavior. Points for sitting still is not what you want back.

2. Flexibility — from a normal course to a full RPG

Some teachers want a full-blown role-playing world with a story arc and a map. Others just want a clean course with a few smart choices built in and a little momentum. Both are legitimate. The tool shouldn’t force you into fantasy dragons if that’s not your subject — and it shouldn’t stop you from going all-in if it is. Look for something that can be your version of engaged learning, that lets you start small and add as you get comfortable.

3. You stay in control of your world

One of the quiet reasons Classcraft worked was ownership — it felt like your class. A good replacement lets you rename things to fit your world (call the points whatever you want, call the map a journey or a galaxy or a syllabus), change how it looks, and decide what’s on and what’s off. If you can’t make it yours, students won’t feel it’s theirs either.

4. Built by people who’ve actually stood in front of a class

Tools built purely by product teams tend to optimize for what demos well, not for what survives a Tuesday afternoon with 34 teenagers. It’s worth asking who made the thing — and whether they’ve ever had to keep a room of real students engaged for 180 days straight.

---

So — where does Gameful fit in? I’ll be honest, because I’m biased: I built it. And you might already be thinking, “wait, doesn’t Gameful have health bars and loot too?” It does — fully customizable. The difference was never the mechanics; it’s what they’re anchored to. In Gameful, the bars move primarily with task completion and real effort — the learning. You can flex them toward things that matter in your room, like showing up on time — but that’s your call, not the built-in point of the system. And it isn’t dressed up in flashy cartoon avatars and behavior theatrics; it’s understated by default and yours to shape, anywhere from a clean, focused course to a fully immersive world. What it’s really built around is the experience of learning: quests students move through, with meaningful choice and visible progress. If the part of Classcraft you miss is the Quests and the feeling of a world worth showing up to, that’s the exact ground Gameful stands on.

The most honest way to judge it isn’t my pitch — it’s seeing what real teachers have built. You can browse actual maps in the Codex, or start poking around on the Learn page. Set one up, and if it’s not for you, no harm done.

And if it turns out a behavior-management tool is really what your classroom needs — for a lot of teachers, especially in the younger grades, it genuinely is — go find a great one. That’s real teaching too, and I mean that. But if what you’ve been missing is the learning side — the quests, the choice, a room students actually want to walk into — then, well: here we are.

— Mick McMurray, founder of Gameful (still teaching)