DataRunes - Learn Data Analytics Through RPG-game Style Experience

Hi Product Hunt. I've spent six years as a data analyst and even more teaching economics and analytics at several universities. What I noticed is educational institutions, as well as online platforms are failing students to prepare them for an actual job. There are several reasons for that: - They don't really teach what employers require from applicants - They are too theoretical and not packed with projects - Datasets are squeaky clean, unlike in business - They lack any motivational incentives to help students push through material University programs are too long and too rigid. Completion rates for self-paced online courses are between 10% and 20%. They aren't tuned for young generations, who require modern approaches, while online games have tapped into all kinds of motivational mechanisms to keep them hooked. So DataRunes is built around the motivation problem, while promising practical skills with messy real-wrold data. You pick a class (Data Warrior, SQL Ninja, Data Wizard, Chartmaster, Data Bard). You earn XP from lessons and interactive activities, get rewards and gain badges. Rune stones bind to specific tools as you actually learn them, Excel, SQL, Power BI, Python. Courses end in boss fights: revenue dropped 18 percent, here is the messy data, figure out why. The kind of thing you get handed in month two of a real analyst job. The piece I most want to reach is a job simulator: a simulated analyst role where a manager sends you vague requests, stakeholders change their minds mid-task, and the data arrives broken. This prepares you for the right soft skills and corporate awareness, that can put you straight on the mid-level skipping junior positions, which is being automated by AI anyway. The teaching itself is deliberately not lecture-shaped. Every lesson opens with a situation that already went wrong and a question you can't answer yet, then teaches through the mistake rather than the definition. Second person, short, blunt. Closer to a senior analyst walking a junior through something than a textbook chapter. Where it actually stands today: two of seven courses in The Awakened tier (beginner) are live and free. Foundations of Data Thinking and Descriptive Statistics. The remaining five plus the capstone ship over the coming months. The Pattern Seeker (Intermediate) and The Rune Master (Advanced) Tiers are written and scoped but not built. It's a 12-month roadmap and will be adjusted on the way. The courses will become paid only by the end of 2026. But anyone who registers before September 30 becomes a Rune Warden: the badge, every paid course released in the following 12 months at no cost, and the private Discord where we decide what gets built next. What I'd most like from this crowd: tell me where the gamification feels like decoration rather than mechanism. That's the line I'm most worried about getting wrong.