About the Game

Shoulders of Giants is a browser-based educational strategy card game built for use in middle school classrooms. Players build decks of historical figures and key terms drawn from world history curriculum, then spend capital to play cards and gain influence at three geographical locations. The mechanics reward students for discovering connections across eras and card types.

The game name comes from Isaac Newton's “if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” The idea that knowledge doesn't just appear out of thin air, but accumulates as prior knowledge across generations, isn't decorative; it's the game's central design principle both in mechanics and pedagogy.

How It's Used

The game is designed as a quick, repeatable extension activity. Individual games take 5–10 minutes and engage students in critical thinking, while creating a baseline of familiarity with names, concepts, and connections students will see in the standard curriculum. Used regularly, it gives a class a shared vocabulary of historical figures and a felt sense of how those figures relate to each other before formal study deepens that knowledge.

The deckbuilding layer specifically rewards strategic thinking through resource management, pattern recognition, and adaptive play against opponents with different decks. The pedagogical objective isn't a specific fact set; it's the cognitive habit of seeing history as a system of interacting people, ideas, and places.

About the Designer

Shoulders of Giants was designed and developed by Daniel Shutler-Ojeda, a middle school history and video production teacher in the San Diego Unified School District. The game began as a physical card game prototype, which was then prototyped digitally with a college programmer, and was ultimately built into the version you're playing using AI-assisted coding tools. This development path was made possible by recent shifts in software tooling that lets practicing teachers build games to their classroom's actual needs, rather than waiting for studios or publishers to build for them.

Privacy

Students never give personal information. A student account is a generated game name and password — no email, no real name. Their teacher sees that game name and password (so a lost login can be recovered), how far they've got, their learning-check totals (how many correct out of how many asked), time played and when they last played. Nothing else.

Guests (no account) are saved only in their own browser.

Teacher accounts are for adults (18+). Teachers sign in with Google or an email and password; their email is used only to sign in and to reset a forgotten password.

To improve the game we record anonymous gameplay data, such as which cards are played and who won a battle. It is never linked to a real name.

Deleting an account: email hello@playshouldersofgiants.com with the student's game name (or the teacher's sign-in email) and we'll delete the account and its saved progress.

Get in Touch

If you're an educator interested in using the game in your classroom, a researcher curious about the design, a fellow developer, or just want to share feedback — I'd love to hear from you.

Email: hello@playshouldersofgiants.com

Acknowledgments

This game wouldn't exist without contributions from many sources:

• Music: Tracks by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
• Music: “Dozing Off” composed by Tom Breyfogle (Birds In The Airport), used with permission.
• Sound effects: Sourced from Pixabay under the Pixabay Content License.
• Special thanks: To the students who have play tested the game; to Justin Berenbaum, iAsia Brown, Sara Roldan, and others for their guidance on the project's direction; and to my wife and daughter for supporting me on this journey.