July the 3rd, 2022 - A group of Hvar students have been awarded for their creativity in a game designed to work on financial literacy skills by Hanfa (The Croatian Financial Services Supervisory Agency).

Croatian students from up and down this country certainly pack a punch when it comes to innovation, creativity and coming up with very impressive ideas. With financial literacy being a burning issue among the younger population, these students certainly stand out from the crowd when it comes to money management skills.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, a game called Desitudo created by a group of Hvar students attending the Petar Hektorovic Elementary School on the aforementioned Dalmatian island recently won in a competition called "Financial literacy through play", which was conducted by the Croatian Financial Services Supervisory Agency (Hanfa). The school won the prize - a smart board - with the winning game designed by these talented Hvar students.

Elementary schools from across the Republic of Croatia participated in the competition, and eighteen applications were received in total. As part of the competition, upper elementary school students and their mentors had to design a board game with the aim of raising the level of students' financial literacy.

The committee for the evaluation of the works pointed out that the students put in a lot of effort, employed their skills in terms of creativity, but also knowledge, and they are extremely satisfied that financial literacy is being considered from an early age to be extremely important as a skill to develop for life.

The game designed and brought to life by the Hvar students from the aforementioned winning school stood out for its creativity, good examples and learning outcomes. The game primarily helps students to recognide the differences between wants and needs and helps them to manage their money more responsibly.

For more, make sure to check out our dedicated Made in Croatia section.

February 3, 2022 - Wordle has taken the internet by storm, testing the wits of millions. What few know, however, is that it was recently adapted into the Croatian language by a group of early enthusiasts of the popular game as a method to encourage its learning. Meet Crodle!

If you're on Twitter, chances are you've seen people all over the place in recent months sharing a set of green, yellow, and gray squares. Either you're confused and don't have the slightest idea what's going on, or you're just another user of the trendy game that's now everywhere you look: Wordle.

Wordle was created by Josh Wardle, a software engineer from Brooklyn, in October 2021. The game that has now taken over the internet, however, started in a very curious, and romantic way. As The New York Times recalls, it so happens that months before its launch, Wardle created it as a kind of gift for his partner, who loved word games. The concept would be one of word guessing, and the name would be a fun one that would combine the pillar on which it was designed and the last name of the person who created it: Wordle.

At first, it was played only by Wardle and his partner, and after several months of obsession, they decided to share it with their families. Shortly after, in October, it would be released worldwide. On November 1st, 90 people played it. Two months later, on a Sunday, 300,000 people were playing it.

One of the reasons why Wordle has become popular so quickly and has won the affection of millions of users is because of its friendly design and easy gameplay. In addition to having a fairly simple concept compared to others that can be found on the Internet, Wordle does not have advertising or annoying pop-ups.

How to play Wordle? You have to guess the Wordle in 6 tries. Each guess must be a valid 5 letter word. Hit the enter button to submit your guess. After each guess, the color of the tiles will change to show how close your guess was to the word. A new Wordle will be available each day! Here are some examples:

(Screenshot/Wordle)

Today the game has millions of users around the world, but among the first loyal users, we must recognize a group of enthusiastic Croats who saw in the original concept an ingenious way to promote the Croatian language and encourage its learning. ''At our language school we were early fans of Wordle, so we decided to create the Croatian version - as a tribute to the original and a fun way to play with the Croatian language'', recalls Maja Jukić, teacher and school manager at the Školica Croatian Language School in Zagreb.

Maja and her colleagues called their Croatian version Crodle, and tell that, just like the original, it's completely free and there’s a new word to guess every day. ''Apart from our fellow citizens here in Croatia, we already have enthusiastic Crodle players with Croatian origins living in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand'', adds Jukić.

The Croatian version features the full Croatian alphabet, but to keep things simple they have considered the letters Dž, Lj and Nj to be counted as two separate letters. (Screenshot/Crodle)

''As we became addicted to the popular word game Wordle, we decided to build a Croatian version for our language students to practice with, and for everyone else to enjoy. Crodle is built with open-source software'', can be read on the game's website.

Anyone can play Crodle from their phone or computer, it's free of ads, and it has a friendly design. To play, click here. Enjoy!

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As Lucija Spiljak/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 13th of August, 2019, after CRANE invested 100,000 euros in them, the young Croatian team got a spring in their step and and created a game that has become a worldwide hit. The director has announced the completion of the game this year.

Last November, eleven members of the Croatian Business Angels Network - CRANE, invested 100,000 euros into a gaming studio and startup called Hyperion Studio from Jastrebarsko, which released the computer survival game ''Journey of Life''.

Not even one year later, this Croatian game found itself on Steam's list of the world's top 250 bestsellers. This is a great success not only for Hyperion and the game itself, which is not even finished yet, but also for the Croatian gaming scene as a whole.

"The players have recognised the potential tjhe game has and we'd like to thank them for that. We're working to improve it each day, and feedback is extremely important to us during this period," said Adriano Žeželić, Hyperion Studios' director and the conceptual founder of the game.

CRANE supported Hyperion with the aim of encouraging the Croatian gaming industry and the development of the Journey of Life game, and as Žeželić said, they were given a a spring in their step, mentorship, and financial support when it was needed most. It's now on this young Croatian team to justify the confidence of those who have invested and complete the game by the end of the year.

"The collaboration has been extraordinary from day one and I can say that I'm extremely pleased. It took us a while to adjust to all the circumstances, but without their support we wouldn't have gotten into the situation we are in today.The investment we received allowed us to bring the game to the level of competitiveness and successful results. We also agreed with CRANE that the company needs to expand and work on other products,'' the conceptual founder revealed.

This Croatian startup has three people in charge of the game's development and one public relations person, but, as the young director reveals, they plan to hire another developer so they can be even more productive when it eventually expands, which is planned. Otherwise, this unique survival game takes place on an island in the Pacific where the main character has to build basic tools and components for survival out in the wilderness, learn to hunt, and manage life in a dangerous environment.

This Croatian game is currently only available for PCs, but Hyperion Studios has announced that it is preparing mobile travel versions of the game, which will be available in the second half of this year. All of the income, as they pointed out at Hyperion, is being returned back to the company for the best possible game development. "So far, about 12,000 units have been sold, with 2,500 units sold during the first seven days of August. Our goal is to finish the game, followed by a major promotion that should bring significant results," Žeželić explained.

The team received significant support from players and users from around the world, and the game, according to its co-author, has been sold in more than eighty countries worldwide.

"The biggest interest in the game comes from North America and Germany, and in Europe we have sold at least one copy in all countries except Macedonia. All of our resources and our main focus are currently on Journey of Life, so we don't plan on embarking on a new story before this one arrives to its Beta version,'' concluded Adriano Žeželić.

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