Muzzy Lane Author: the cloud authoring service for learning games

Muzzy Lane Software, a company that has built game-based learning products with McGraw-Hill Education, Cengage Learning, Pearson Education and National Geographic, announced Muzzy Lane Author in September 2015. The service is cloud based and designed mobile first, so games made with it run on desktops, tablets and phones.

Corporate partners, online educators, subject matter experts and course builders came first. The company said it would later open Author to anyone with a game idea. CTO Dave McCool called it a do-it-yourself version of the company's game service that gives partners more control over content at lower cost, and Author started as a beta for a limited group of existing and prospective partners. Chris Dede of the Harvard Graduate School of Education praised the pairing of design power and ease of use, and Melissa Logue, who teaches Spanish at Columbus State Community College, said basic word processing skills were enough to create learning activities.

Author shipped with five authoring tools, with more in development. SmartChat builds simulated chat conversations and gives students feedback on each decision. Insights puts students in a role in a 3D virtual environment, where they review research, take a position and defend it under cross-examination. Vote builds quick games that pair images and let players vote until one favorite remains. Align asks players to line up items correctly, such as a word with its definition, part of speech, antonyms and synonyms. SlideShow sets a narrative context or presents data to a player.

Established products moved onto the same service as well. Moving the McGraw-Hill Practice Series there made it possible to author new scenarios inside those simulation environments.

The company's website, muzzylane.com, loads in November 2026 and presents Author as a platform for instructional designers who build real-world role-play assessments. It offers a Try Author button and a sign-in page at author.muzzylane.com. The pages describe creating content, deploying to a learning management system and scoring durable skills, and the footer shows a 2024 copyright line.

The page does not name SmartChat, Insights, Vote, Align or SlideShow, so which of the 2015 tools remain in the product is not stated there. The same company built KidCitizen, one of three civics games for the Library of Congress.