Understanding glycolysis remains challenging for secondary students due to the complexity of its sequential reactions, enzyme specificity, and representational demands. This work presents Glyc-Uno, a card-based instructional game designed to support mastery of the glycolytic pathway through structured, rule-based sequencing. Using a design and development approach with a one-group pretest–posttest implementation, the game was introduced to 42 Grade 12 STEM students and evaluated by five biology teachers. Teacher ratings confirmed the game’s curricular relevance, organizational clarity, and instructional quality. Students reported high levels of affective, behavioral, cognitive, and sociocultural engagement, while game-experience data indicated moderate challenge and positive affect. Pretest–posttest comparisons showed substantial learning gains (d = 1.89), suggesting that repeated retrieval, enzyme matching, and pathway sequencing during gameplay support conceptual understanding of glycolysis. A significant gender difference in psychological involvement–empathy was also observed, with female learners reporting higher levels of interpersonal engagement. Overall, Glyc-Uno operationalizes biochemical pathway logic within rule-based gameplay, offering a structure-aligned supplementary tool for teaching metabolic pathways. Implications for instruction, along with limitations and directions for future research, are discussed.
Nob et al. (Wed,) studied this question.