Lure of the Labyrinth: Vending Machine | Level 1 Walkthrough

Welcome to Math with Mr. J. In this video, I'm going to walk through level one of the Lore of the Labyrinth vending machine game, which you can play to learn about pre-algebra expressions and equations. Research shows the best way to learn from the game is by playing it before learning pre-algebra more formally. It's okay if you don't finish the game. The important part is to experiment, restart, and try different strategies. So before I explain the math, take 10 minutes to play level 1 of the vending machine game. If it's helpful, you can get a sheet of paper to write down notes. While you play, think about these questions. What strategies are you trying? How are your strategies changing over time? Pause the video and click the link below or in the description to play the game now. In the game, you are approached by a very hungry monster. The monster gives you coins to buy snacks from the vending machine, but you're not a monster. You don't know what the monster coins are. You'll have to figure out how much each coin is worth, then buy the tasty pack to feed the hungry monster. There are many different ways to solve level 1. Did you come up with any creative strategies? Share them in the comments below. I'm going to walk through one possible strategy to solve level 1. The monster gave us three different types of coins. Blue coins, which have round eye pupils. Green coins, which have slit cat eye pupils. And pink coins, which have speckled eye pupils. You may have noticed that the easiest way to figure out what each coin is worth is by paying three of the same coin. Take a look at what we have here. We have three blue coins and all together they equal 24. So what number plus what number plus what number gives us 24. Since each coin has the exact same value, we can simply split 24 evenly among the three coins. If we divide 24 into three equal parts, what do we get? That's eight. So each coin has to be worth eight. And we can double check here. Eight plus eight plus eight equals 24. Now try it yourself. Pause the video and solve for how much the green and pink coins are worth. So what answers did you get? I got seven for green and three for pink. Now that we know how much each coin is worth, we can figure out which coins to use to buy the highlighted snack. We can plug in the coin values to find the combination that equals the cost of the snack. So for our example here, 17, let's try two of our biggest coins, the blue coin first. So eight plus eight, that gives us 16. So we would need one more to get to 17. But the smallest coin that we have is three. So if we use blue, blue, pink, we would get eight plus 8 plus 3. That equals 19. So this is two more than the snack's price. The green coin is worth one less than the blue coin. So if we swap out both of the blue coins for green coins, we get 7 plus 7 plus 3, which does equal 17. Now the monster swaps out one of your coins for a new orange coin which has two missing corners. We can use the same process as before to find the value of the new coin. Now we have three orange coins and all together they equal 27. So what number plus what number plus what number gives us 27. Since each coin has the exact same value we can simply split 27 evenly among the three coins. If we divide 27 into three equal parts, what do we get? Well, nine. So the orange coin is worth nine. And we can double check this. Nine plus nine plus nine equals 27. Finally, we can buy the tasty pack and feed the hungry monster. We know that the orange coin is worth 9, the green coin is worth 7, and the pink coin is worth 3. Which 3 coins should we spend to buy the tasty pack? Which costs 25. We can use the same organized trial and error strategy that we used before. We can try a combination, then swap out a coin or coins to get a closer value. Pause this video and try this yourself. So which coins did you use? I used two orange coins and one green coin. To check this answer, we can replace or plug in how much each coin is worth. So nine plus nine plus seven. This adds up to 25. So let's go ahead and spend these coins to buy the tasty pack. So there you have it. There's a walkthrough of one possible way you can solve level one of the vending machine game. Now how does this game relate to math? This game builds pre-algebra reasoning skills through a real life, well monster life, problem of solving for the values of unknown coins. When we solved for how much the monster coins were worth, we represented that unknown value with a letter, like B for the blue coin. These letters are called variables, and are commonly used in pre-algebra, algebra, and almost all higher levels of math. By playing this level, you started to learn what a variable is, how to solve one-step equations, how to determine if a number is a solution of an equation, and writing equations from word problems. I dropped links to more videos and examples down in the description. Those are great follow-ups to this game. Now next up is level two, where you can only spend up to two coins of the same kind. This challenge level introduces systems of equations in algebra. You can learn more about level 2 here.