Play Hidden Games in Canvas

[gnordberg]

Did you know there are hidden games inside of Canvas?

Taking a quick break from teaching and learning in Canvas can be a nice stress relief and an opportunity for a little bit of harmless fun in your day.

Just make sure your “quick break” doesn’t consume your entire afternoon! 😉

Show Me the Games!

Open any Canvas course. In the web address bar at the top, type any random characters to the end of the URL and press Enter on your keyboard.

Enter random characters on the end of a Canvas course URL

You'll see a Page Not Found message on the page, which is to be expected because we just typed gibberish in the URL in the previous step.

Page Not Found

Press the spacebar on your keyboard and you'll start one of several hidden games inside of Canvas.

Gameplay

To play, use the arrow keys and the spacebar on your keyboard.

Which game is your favorite?

[HaydenVance]

great post

[anything-]

Why isn't it working when I click the spacebar?

[jbarr]

Yeah, our students found this, and teachers want me to turn it off.  LOL

[snmargeson]

But is there any way to turn them off? 

[Sandie]

Yes, you can turn it off by go to account setting > Features > tick the check box "Remove hidden game from 404 page"

[playboicarti]

you're not a favorite teacher are  you?

[Procyon]

Why would you want to??

[SDonn2020]

I just found this post. Why would this be here??!! LOL I think it is hysterical. 

[jesimpki]

Joining the other dissenters, but yeah, how can we disable these games for students that have problems staying on task?

Edit: Administrators, if you're requested to disable/block these for your district, chat with support and they can have the request submitted to disable the games for your district's Canvas instance.

[ProfessorBeyrer]

Thank you! I've been looking for other options besides solitaire for taking breaks! I wonder what the other games are besides the galaga-style vaccination game.

[Chris_Hofer]

@ProfessorBeyrer ...

There is only one other hidden game I am aware of, and it looks like this...

Basically, there are a bunch of gray squares that move quickly in a horizontal movement across the screen.  You control the larger blue square at the bottom of the screen with the keyboard arrow keys...trying to avoid the gray moving squares to try and touch the larger green square at the top of the box.  It's pretty hard.

[ShaneDeHorney]

Hi Chofer, 

Where did you find that one? I see the one on Page not found that appears as a spaceship battle type game. I would love to know where the other is. 

[Chris_Hofer]

@ShaneDeHorney ...

Sorry that I did not reply to you until now.  The game that appears for you is quite random.  There's really no rhyme or reason to which game will pop up first.  You'll just have to keep trying until you see the second game I've shown above.

[Susan-L]

Are these games still there? I used them in summer 2022, but I checked recently and they don't seem to be there with the usual instructions.

Thank you!

[Chris_Hofer]

@Susan-L ...

Canvas administrators do have an option (which I believe is somewhat new...but not sure how new) to enable/disable the ability to find the two hidden games when you encounter a 404 error page within Canvas.  It's entirely possible that your school's Canvas admin has disabled the games in your Canvas environment.

[DrNufer]

In case you all want to learn some technique for "beating" that game...
https://youtu.be/0v6XNn2Jg6k

[jackkl]

i found another one, it's this panda puzzle game

[Susan-L]

Can you show how you found it?

[Chris_Hofer]

@Susan-L ...

Your Canvas admins at your school have the ability to turn those games on/off, so you may or may not be able to do this.  If you click on the "Home" page of your course, for example, you might have a URL that looks like:

https://SchoolName.instructure.com/courses/12345

You can just put any random characters in the URL so that you get a Page Not Found screen.  For example:

https://SchoolName.instructure.com/courses/12345/ewrjpirapfi

Once you see the red planet, rocket ship, and astronaut image, just press your Space Bar on your keyboard.  It's totally random which game you get...so you might have to try a few times.

[DrNufer]

I finally gave that a try.  I don't imagine I'll every be good at that.  My only strategy is to pop out all the pieces and place them back in.

[runtzj]

I realize I am being a killjoy here, but this is a very annoying feature. Especially considering I'd have to have our district Canvas admin turn it off. 

[Procyon]

Killjoy.

[runtzj]

I'm the worst, it's true.

[BrianHarvey]

Good Job .