Agreed that having a mission or goal is important. What comes to mind for me is a game called the Island of Dr. Brain that I played as a kid. There was a sect

Agreed that having a mission or goal is important. What comes to mind for me is a game called the Island of Dr. Brain that I played as a kid. There was a section in the game where you would input a bunch of directional commands to send a robot through a maze. Then you would "run" the program and see if the robot made it to the end. Of course, this didn't teach me how to program, but it did teach me how to think in an input/output sense--input these instructions and this thing happens--in a way that I hadn't previously learned in school, and the idea of finishing the maze helped the game hold my attention. Game mechanics...well, they work. FWIW I'm female and I was never put off by the fact that neither Dr. Brain, nor the legos I had, etc., were geared towards girls. That said, what you have seems like a really good start and I'm very much looking forward to experimenting with the app.