About La Liga Sombra

La Liga Sombra (“The Shadow League”) is a browser-based detective game for high school Spanish 1. A ring of thieves is stealing cultural treasures across the Spanish-speaking world, and students work the cases as agents: they interview witnesses, read case files, listen to recorded statements, and name a suspect.

The point of the story is that the Spanish is load bearing. A student who skips the vocabulary cannot follow the witness, and a student who ignores the verb tense arrests the wrong person. Comprehension is how you win, not a quiz bolted onto a game.

The content follows the Que Chévere Level 1 sequence and the ACTFL proficiency bands, moving from Novice Low to Intermediate Low across the year.

• •20 cases set in 20 different Spanish-speaking countries
• •10 cold cases for students who finish early
• •3 boss cases that pull together several units at once
• •689 vocabulary terms, each tracked per student
• •A 36-week plan across two semesters, with printable worksheets, a Pasaporte Cultural, and rubrics

A case takes about one class period. Each one has six to ten stages depending on the unit, always including a briefing, vocabulary work, a reading, a listening passage, and the suspect lineup.

1. 1.

   The teacher creates a class

   This produces a 6-character class code. It takes about a minute and costs nothing.

2. 2.

   Students join

   A student picks a display name, usually a first name or a nickname, and sets a 4-digit PIN. No email address is involved at any point.

3. 3.

   They work the case

   Students play through the stages in Spanish. Wrong answers explain themselves rather than just buzzing, so a stuck student can keep going.

4. 4.

   They earn the stamp

   Solving a country earns a passport stamp, plus badges for accuracy, speed, and vocabulary mastery.

5. 5.

   The teacher checks the board

   The dashboard shows who is stuck, what specifically they are failing, and whether the class is on pace with the plan.

No personally identifiable information is required to play.

What is collected

• •The display name the student chooses. It is a nickname or first name and it is not verified against anything.
• •A 4-digit PIN, hashed with HMAC-SHA256 and a per-student salt. It is never stored in readable form.
• •Game progress: which activities were finished, the scores, and time spent on each.
• •Vocabulary data: which words were practiced and which were answered correctly.
• •The class code, which the teacher assigns and which is not tied to any personal identity.

What is not collected

• ✗Real names, email addresses, or photos
• ✗Location data
• ✗Device identifiers or IP addresses, beyond ordinary server logs
• ✗Behavioral or advertising data

Nothing is sold or shared with third parties. Game data is stored in a Supabase PostgreSQL database and the game is hosted on Vercel. Both services are SOC 2 compliant. Data is kept for the school year and the teacher can delete it at any time.

The game is a static browser application. There is nothing to install on the device, nothing to push through an image, and no plugin or extension. If a Chromebook can open a web page, it can run this.

Because students sign in with a class code and a PIN rather than a school account, no roster sync, SIS integration, or SSO configuration is required to start. That also means the game never touches directory data.

The teacher dashboard exports grades as CSV, so scores can go into whatever gradebook the district already uses.

Parents: please contact your student's Spanish teacher directly with questions about how the game is used in class.

Teachers and administrators: the fastest way to evaluate it is to play the activities and then open a free class with a single period before committing to anything wider.