It’s January 1. At last, the New Year has finally arrived. Last night, people all over the world hosted New Year’s Eve parties, ushering in 2015 and saying farewell to 2014.

Did you know that if we were the Maya, we’d be celebrating the New Year in July, not January? According to the Haab Mayan Calendar, the New Year does not begin on January 1 but rather July 26 each year—based on the earth’s rotation in relation to the sun.

Either way, we’ve got a lot to celebrate.

This past year has been exciting for Dig-It! Games™. We announced the winner of our 2013 Character Drawing Contest, Michaela and her character Anna, an archaeologist specializing in deciphering codes and identifying artifacts. We launched the conclusion of our award-winning game Mayan Mysteries™, and the app skyrocketed to being one of the featured iTunes apps for Kids 9-11 and is a top download around the world. We released the next game in our Loot Pursuit™ series, Loot Pursuit: Pompeii™, and focused on meeting Common Core standards so that students can practice their math skills aligned to what’s being taught in the classroom. We developed Maya Quiz™ as a complementary trivia app to Mayan Mysteries™, a game that’s fun for the whole family.

Then we began work on our next game: an update to the first game we created almost five years ago—Roman Town™—with a sneak peek through one of its mini-games, Artifact Snatch™.

Outside the realm of general company news, we hosted two Open House events at our studio in Bethesda and watched children, parents, and teachers fall in love with our games.

It’s exciting to see how one of our games can affect its players. It’s incredible to see kids get excited about learning—both through our game content, but also about game development and the work that goes into a game’s creation.

Now, for a toast to 2015. Here’s to the things we know now, and to the things we will learn in the coming year. To students and their teachers, returning from a (hopefully) restful break for the second half of the school year. And to the Dig-It! Games™ family—for their dedication to our mission, helping to turn students into lifelong learners with a love of curiosity, discovery and play.

In 2002, an analysis of residue inside an ancient Maya teapot led to the discovery that the Maya had been consuming chocolate as far back as 2,600 years ago.

The cacao tree is scientifically known as Theobroma cacao, or “food of the gods.” Even their own records depict chocolate being poured for rulers and gods through hieroglyphics.

However, from Spanish accounts of the Maya culture, archaeologists know that these spouted teapots were used to drink liquid chocolate—a tradition that spanned across all classes and was not just singularly available to the upper class. The Maya often consumed chocolate with every meal.

Unlike our American hot chocolate, which is often mixed with milk, the analysis of the teapot residue shows the cacao butter was mixed with maize, water, honey, or chili. These ingredients and a pouring process created a thick and foamy hot chocolate for the Maya to enjoy.

With the holidays right around the corner, we wanted to pay homage to this delicious wintery drink with a recipe based on the Maya’s traditional hot chocolate. Below, you’ll find a recipe to make your own:

Ingredients:

3 cups boiling water
1 to 2 cinnamon sticks
8 ounces bittersweet Maya Kakaw or Xocoalt (chocolate paste) or
3 tablets Mexican unsweetened chocolate, cut into small pieces
2 tablespoons of wild pure honey, or raw sugar to taste
1 pinch of dried red chili
1 dried organic grown vanilla bean, split lengthwise
l tablespoon roasted peanuts, ground extra fine (optional Aztec hot chocolate taste)

How to Prepare:

In a large saucepan over medium-high heat, add the cinnamon sticks to boiling water. Cook until liquid is reduced to 2 1/2 cups. Remove cinnamon sticks; add the vanilla bean and lower the heat a bit, wait until bubbles appear around the edge to reduce heat to low and drop the chocolate pieces and wild pure honey, mix well and whisk occasionally until chocolate is melted. Turn off heat, remove vanilla bean. Whisk vigorously to create a light foam effect, sprinkle the dried chili pepper and serve.

If the hot chocolate is too bitter or rich, the website suggests that you can certainly add milk and sugar—ingredients added by the Spanish—to create a creamier, sweeter and more familiar taste.

Happiest of holidays and best wishes for the new year! Keep an eye out–we’ve got games in the works!

Thanksgiving means different things to different people. The holiday often conjures up images of the freshly-browned turkey and green-bean casserole. It makes people think of football games and parades and the chill of oncoming winter. But for most folks, we remember our family.

Here at Dig-It! Games™, our team is an extension of our own family. They feel at home, welcomed and appreciated in our offices. This culture of collaboration and friendship is so important when it comes to making games. Why? Because games should be fun—and if we’re not having fun making them, we’re not doing our job right. Games bring us together.

When we were children, there were long nights of board games like Monopoly and Clue. Then video games grew in popularity and there was push towards family competitions over things like Wii Sports. Now we see smart phones and tablets, games being played by children in restaurants or as their parents run errands. It’s time for games to bring families together again.

Thanksgiving is the perfect time to play an educational app with your children. Take the time to sit down with them, find something they’re interested in learning about, and look for a corresponding app. Games can be especially helpful while traveling to visit relatives (like Fiona and Charlie visiting Uncle Alex in Mayan Mysteries™!)

• Take turns playing a trivia app like Maya Quiz™ or Artifact Snatch™ and hold a contest to reach the highest score.
• Try a competition to stretch out the minds of your middle-schoolers with MayaNumbers™ for a prize, like an extra favorite snack on the airplane—or promise them that last piece of pumpkin pie.
• Brush up on your own math skills and see how well your children do with our Loot Pursuit™ series. Roam the ruins of Pompeii or travel to Tulum—save artifacts by correctly solving math problems aligned to the Common Core State Standards.
• Play a long-term game like Mayan Mysteries™ alongside your student. Help them if they struggle with difficult puzzles or timed challenges. For younger kids, read passages aloud about Maya culture and support your child in tracking down a notorious looter alongside our beloved characters, Team Q.

#GiveThanks for the family you share. Laugh, love, and spend time together this holiday with one of our apps.

We’d like to express our gratitude to the teachers, administrators, students and game-lovers who play our apps across the globe. Thank you for joining us to create a worldwide Dig-It! Games™ family with one mission: to empower middle school students to love learning through gameplay. Happy Thanksgiving!

Dig-It! Games™’ latest app, Artifact Snatch™, is the first mini game from the updated Roman Town™, the company’s inaugural award-winning, parent-and-educator-praised game. Currently in development, Roman Town™ will be released in 2015. Until then, you should download Artifact Snatch™. Here’s why:

1. Read up on more than 75 genuine, ancient Roman artifacts.
Artifact Snatch™ has an encyclopedia of authentic artifacts that can be found throughout the game. Each artifact includes a 100% historically accurate description with information about the artifacts’ use in Roman culture and what we can learn from its discovery.

2. Grab and go—snatch up as many identifiable artifacts quickly for a higher score.
The object of the game is to identify as many learned Roman artifacts as you can within 90 seconds of play. The more artifacts you have learned, the higher score you can receive. The artifact’s title is shown at the top of the screen and players must correctly identify the artifact from a group of images. Once a player identifies the artifact correctly, another puzzle appears to continue play. Watch the clock—as time passes, it moves from green to yellow to red when time is almost up.

3. The game senses your challenge level—and meets it.
I’m always up for a challenge, but I was surprised to find that the more artifacts I identified correctly, the harder the game got. Suddenly, the group of three artifacts became a group of 18 to choose from. Searching for the object becomes more difficult and takes more time. If you know your Roman culture well enough, though, you may still be able to beat your previous score.

4. Psst! Here’s a secret: Team Q—of the top-rated Mayan Mysteries™—is joining in for the next Roman Town™ adventure. Does that mean Ladrone is in Italy?
Fiona, a popular member of the mystery-solving Team Q, greets you when Artifact Snatch™ opens, taking you on a guided tour of the game. While Team Q was not a part of the original Roman Town™, Artifact Snatch™ gives us a sneak peek of what to expect in the updated game. Will the game be story-driven? Will Team Q follow the notorious thief Ladrone through Rome? We’ll have to wait and see.

5. It’s free!
Artifact Snatch™ is free to download on the iTunes store. It includes the ability to post scores on Game Center and compete against peers to become the top-ranking player. Easy to use, fun for all ages. Play to learn!