Phatiks builds subject-specific reading games for secondary English (KS3–KS5), designed by a serving teacher. Screens have taught a generation to skim. We design screen experiences that engineer the opposite: slow, evidence-grounded reading.
phatic /ˈfatɪk/ adj. Linguistics. — of language that performs a social function rather than conveying meaning. Small talk. Surface noise. We build for everything underneath it.
The problem
Reading on screens reliably produces shallower comprehension than reading on paper — the well-replicated screen inferiority effect. But the cause isn't the pixels. It's behaviour: screen conventions cue scanning, scrolling, and skipping, and pupils carry those habits into every text they meet, including the ones in the exam hall.
That is a design problem, and design problems can be solved. If skimming is trained by screens, close reading can be trained by them too — provided the mechanics make careful reading the only winning strategy.
You cannot guess your way to a high score in a Phatiks game.
Every engine is built so the scoring rewards precision, evidence, and re-reading — and punishes the skim. Highlight the wrong words, lose the streak. Infer without evidence, drop a ring. Miss the stylistic fingerprint, lose the case.
Gamification usually means points bolted onto a worksheet. Here the game is the reading discipline.
The architecture
Every Phatiks game belongs to one of three layers — so the suite grows as a system, not a grab-bag.
Vertical reading
One text, read to the bottom. Chunked reveal, heat-scan, chained evidence tasks, scored highlighting for precision and coverage — and a second inference that only pays if you re-read.
SUBTEXT
Horizontal reading
Texts against each other. Stylistic fingerprints, register, idiolect, authorship. Two-player Prosecution v Defence — argument as a mechanic, not a worksheet.
WHODUNNIT?
The shared foundation
Grammar, morphology, metalanguage, vocabulary — the instruments a reader needs before either door opens.
TEXTERMINATORS · MEGAMORPH · SPEED READER · INFER-RED
Consolidation principle: roughly eight game engines carry fifteen-plus curriculum concepts. We extend engines; we don't multiply them.
The product
Every game is mapped to National Curriculum reading strands and GCSE / A Level Assessment Objectives. The beachhead is A Level English Language.
Space Invaders for grammar terminology.
Fast-twitch metalanguage under fire. Mapped to A Level Language AO1 and AO3.
Play it now →Tetris for morphemes.
Chain prefixes, roots and suffixes into real words — with a dictionary as referee over a curated lexicon of word families.
Play it →Grammar scanning against the clock.
Tokenised texts, streak mechanics, two modes: word classes and spoken-language features.
Play it →Vocabulary inference as a dartboard.
Three elimination rings — word class, then connotation, then meaning — with decoys built from real pupil misconceptions.
Play it →Close reading as a dive.
Descend through a text: heat-scan, scored highlighting, graded inference — and a second descent that rewards re-reading.
Play it →Forensic linguistics. Solve the case.
Identify the culprit from stylistic fingerprints in written evidence. Four cases across KS3–5, plus two-player Prosecution v Defence.
Play it →Teacher Studio
Every game ships with an authoring layer built around one non-negotiable: nothing reaches a pupil that a teacher hasn't approved.
The extract your class is actually studying this term — not a generic bank of someone else's passages.
Questions, tiers, decoys and feedback are drafted automatically from the text.
Full control over every field. A mandatory review gate before anything goes live.
The class plays a game built on the exact text they're studying — and the results flow back to the teacher.
Designed for the Children's Code from day one: no pupil free-text ever reaches an AI model at runtime, pupil identifiers are pseudonymous, and the teacher-review gate is mandatory, not optional. Authoring is table stakes; the engines are the asset.
Who's behind it
Phatiks is founded by a serving secondary English teacher with nearly two decades of classroom experience across English Language and Literature, from KS3 to A Level. Every mechanic starts from a real classroom problem, and every game is piloted with real classes before it's called finished.
We're openly sceptical about most EdTech — that's precisely why we're building this. The bar isn't "engaging." The bar is: does the mechanic force the reading behaviour the exam, and life beyond it, actually demands?
Get involved
The pedagogy, the games, and the pilot pipeline exist. Here's what would accelerate them.
The next phase needs a platform layer — authentication, stored pupil progress, secure hosting at whole-school scale. If you build for the web and care about what it does to young readers, we should talk.
The games work. A designer's eye would make them sing — game feel, UI polish, and a visual identity that earns its place on an interactive whiteboard.
English departments who'll give honest feedback from real lessons. Zero setup burden by design — results flow back automatically, and there's a paper-based option too.
We're pre-seed, building toward a whole-school subscription model. If you invest in EdTech — or know someone who fits any box on this page — an introduction is worth a great deal.
Whether you're a developer, a designer, a Head of English, an investor — or you just know someone who is.
hello@phatiks.com