Literary Hub has an 90s style "Mathblaster" game based on Emily Dickinson

One of the grand ironies of life is how naturally inquisitive children are before attending school. At the beginning of their formalized education, children will use knowledge as a form of social currency among their peer groups. Kids will gleefully flaunt whatever information they possess to symbolize their maturity and presumed superiority. However, after sliding out of the school system's assembly line, the zeal most children carried for ingesting new information withers on the vine. Where they once craved the ability to read, kids will procrastinate whenever their teachers issue a reading assignment. 

In an effort to keep children interested, schools and parents have concocted several schemes to merge education and entertainment. Several platforms have seemingly found the perfect answer to this age-old conundrum by using children's obsession with video games. Literary Hub's new game "EmilyBlaster" could be the most engaging way to make students that are interfacing with Emily Dickinson's work for the first time view the classic poems in a new light. 

Although the potential for enticing students to read Emily Dickinson exists, the game was actually created to serve as a tie-in to the novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. 

"EmilyBlaster" is based on a fictional game from Gabrielle Zevin's upcoming novel,Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, reports Literary Hub. The book follows two childhood friends who reconnect later in life and make video games together; one of them, Sadie, creates "EmilyBlaster." Along with Dickinson's poetry, the game was inspired by 1980s edutainment games like "Math Blaster!"

"I liked the slight subversiveness of making a game where the object was to shoot poetry," Zevin tells Literary Hub, "and I thought that Emily Dickinson's compact verse style and memorable phrasings would make for perfect targets."