Mystery Train: An educational game by Yle
Yle developed the ‘Mystery Train’ game as part of their educational game portfolio. This educational game teaches coding logic and problem-solving skills in a fun and engaging way: 11-to-16-year-olds need to stop a high speeding train from crashing into Helsinki Central Station by solving coding puzzles!
Vision and Purpose
With the emphasis on engagement and excitement, Yle developed a game that’s innovative, educational and immersive to foster programmatic thinking by blending media and learning elements together. Even though the puzzles include coding logic, the goal is really more to learn how to think, rather than learning how to code.
Children between 11 and 16 are not the easiest to target with a game as a public broadcaster. This age group values credibility in games and want games to be cool and exciting to play. So, to fulfil those needs, Yle conducted user testing with this target audience during various stages of the production of this game (planning, production, final stages).
Next, Yle distributed the game in 2 ways: direct marketing to children, marketing the game as ‘cool’, and distributing the game through schools, marketing it as ‘educational and fun’.
Game reception & feedback
Released in January 2025, the game is widely appreciated by the public. It already has over 250.000 page views, with a playthrough percentage of 25 (considered excellent!) and it’s lifespan is still going strong.
Schools even got extra online material to deepen the game’s themes and add additional tasks, consisting of logic tasks to do with pen and paper and block-based coding on Scratch. The distribution through schools was a smart play, as the game got played in small groups fostering competition and engagement. Students find the game exciting and credible, while teachers find it highly educational, hoping that Yle will make more educational games.
Key learnings
To achieve high user engagement, designing the game for the target audience is crucial for creating engaging and educational content. Throughout the design and development, Yle used AI tools to improve efficiency and creativity in content production. Furthermore, by making the game available on various platforms, they could maximize user reach and interaction, since 11-to-16-year-olds are very active on mobile. And lastly, regular assesments of the user experience helped Yle to refine the game and maintain its relevance.
Excited to try it out yourself? Play the game here!
International collaborations
After it's original presentation in the Games & Engagement Hub, ERR got really inspired and reached out to Yle to check out collaboration opportunities. Together, they translated the Mystery Train in Estonian and launched it for a new audience in september 2025.
