Santiago Betancur · Bogotá, Colombia
Gamification Lab
AI-native tools for project formulation and game-based learning. Everything we build runs on AI — from the simulators our students use to the games, courses and videos that teach them.
Winner · Golden Maker Award – EDU Builder's Quest, Genially WonderFest 2025 Watch at 8:17
01 — What we build
Everything we build runs on AI
We turn hard professional skills — formulating public projects, managing them, researching — into tools and games people actually use. AI sits inside every one of them.
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Project formulation
Simulators and assistants that guide teams through Colombia's MGA methodology for public investment, from the problem tree to indicators and fundraising proposals.
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Gamification
Learning games, visual novels, escape rooms and classroom mini-games that make project management and research methods playable.
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AI-assisted teaching
University courses on project management, agile and research, redesigned around AI: feedback, scenarios and practice generated on demand.
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Media & storytelling
A recurring illustrated cast and AI-produced videos that carry our lessons beyond the classroom.
02 — Flagship product
MGA Simulator
Every public investment project in Colombia has to be formulated with the MGA, the national government's methodology. It is hard to learn and easy to get wrong. Our simulator lets students and formulators practise on a guided case and get instant AI feedback on the quality of their logic.
Piloted in university courses in 2026. Used in class to formulate a complete project before touching the official platform.
Open the simulator-
01
Diagnose
Build the problem tree: central problem, causes and effects.
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02
Set objectives
Turn the tree into objectives, means and ends.
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03
Design alternatives
Define alternatives, activities and indicators.
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04
AI evaluation
An AI evaluator scores the logic chain problem → objective → means → ends and checks every indicator against the CREMA criteria.
03 — Featured games
Play what we teach
Two visual novels, live and playable in the browser. Each one turns a course unit into a story.
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Nexus — Projects Make-a-thon
An interactive visual novel that teaches project management through immersive storytelling and a macOS-style desktop interface.
Play Nexus -
Buenaventura — The Quantitative Route
A watercolour visual novel set in Buenaventura, on Colombia's Pacific coast, for learning research methodology through the quantitative route, with a glossary, characters, routes and concepts to unlock.
Play Buenaventura
04 — Classroom innovation
Live classes students take part in
Our agile classes are interactive web experiences, not slide decks. Students check in, work through real cases and build and play the product the class is about. Both were taught in the Project Management specialization at UniMinuto (Buenaventura) and were very well received.
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Principles of Agility
The 12 agile principles adopted by PMI, each one with the idea, a real case and an example of use. Students check in from their own device and the teacher follows attendance from a dedicated view.
Open the class -
Build what delivers value
Six agile concepts (requirements, model, prototype, MVP, backlog and board) applied to one case: a clicks app that grows iteration by iteration until students play it 1 vs 1 on the same phone or computer.
Open the case
05 — Open lab
Free, open and growing
Gamification Lab is also a free YouTube channel on AI-powered gamification and a library of free Genially templates. We teach teachers to gamify their classes with AI, and we share what we make.
- Channel views
- 14.7K
- Subscribers
- 112
- Videos published
- 73
- Countries reached
- 41
66 Shorts, 7 long-form videos
led by the US, the Philippines and India
Views and subscribers: public YouTube counters, 7 Oct 2026. Videos and countries: YouTube Studio, 16 Jan – 22 Jun 2026, which also logged 45.1K impressions and 175 hours watched. Channel launched 16 Jan 2026.
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Gamification Lab on YouTube
Tutorials and Shorts on interactive, AI-assisted learning: drag-and-drop activities, game-style presentations and guessing challenges.
Watch the channel -
Genially
Free Genially templates
Game-style presentations and interactive activities, shared for free with the Genially community and ready to reuse in class.
Golden Maker Award – EDU winner at Genially WonderFest 2025. Announced by Genially at 8:17.
Browse the templates
06 — Free guide
Projects, fundraising and formulation with Claude
A practical guide to managing projects, raising funds and formulating proposals step by step with Claude, built on the visual system of PMBOK 8. First edition, October 2026.
- AProject fundamentals: life cycle, predictive and adaptive approaches
- BFormulation and funding: logical framework, fundraising, intelligent fundraising
- CClaude in practice: set it up and formulate a project with it, step by step
- DQuick reference: glossary, sources and index
Free to share and adapt for non-commercial use, with attribution. Independent work, not affiliated with PMI. PMBOK is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute.
07 — How we work
Built with Claude
- Web projects deployed in 2026
- 60
- Learning formats
- 4
- Live products
- 5
simulators, games, visual novels, courses
MGA Simulator, 2 games, 2 interactive classes
How we use Claude today
- Build. Claude Code is our daily pair-programmer: we design, code and deploy our web apps with it — this site included.
- Formulate. Claude works as a co-formulator on real projects: problem trees, logical frameworks and fundraising proposals.
- Teach. We write and teach about it: a free practical guide on projects, fundraising and formulation with Claude.
Next six months
- Move the MGA evaluator to the Claude API, with structured outputs.
- A Claude-powered formulation assistant: from problem tree to a complete MGA document.
- Gamified courses whose scenarios and feedback are generated with Claude.
08 — More prototypes
Games and courses we have shipped
- Game
PMBOK 8 Game
Learn the 8th edition of the PMBOK Guide by playing.
- Course
PMBOK 8 + MGA wiki
A course wiki that connects project management standards with Colombia's MGA.
- Course
Research fundamentals
An interactive course on the foundations of research methodology.
- Course
Scrum course with mini-apps
A Scrum course with practice mini-apps: a framework builder and a decision logger.
- Simulation
Territorial scenarios
Decision scenarios for projects in Cauca, Colombia.
- Diagnostic
Capability diagnostic
An AI-assisted self-assessment of team capabilities.
09 — About
Santiago Betancur
Project manager and university lecturer in Bogotá. I teach project formulation, agile methods and research methodology — and I build the AI tools and games I wish my students had.
Gamification Lab is where that work lives: a small, bootstrapped studio shipping AI-native learning products for Latin America, starting with public-project formulation in Colombia.
sabetancurza@unal.edu.co- Company
- Gamification Lab
- Founder
- Santiago Betancur Zapata
- Based in
- Bogotá, Colombia
- Stage
- Bootstrapped
- Building since
- 2026
- Recognition
- Golden Maker Award – EDU, Builder's Quest, Genially WonderFest 2025
- Website
- sabe.lat