A2–B2 prepositions cases grammar offline
Preposition Survivor
Pick the right article form - keep your crowd alive
Common German prepositions with a fixed case appear in short phrases and you choose the article form that follows. You also meet register differences such as wegen des Wetters and the more colloquial wegen dem Wetter.
Memorising prepositions from a chart rarely sticks on its own - try drilling them in context, under light time pressure, until the right article starts to feel obvious. Each preposition has both a fixed case (mit + dative, für + accusative) and idiomatic uses that don't map cleanly to English. High-volume contextual reps with immediate feedback are, in our experience, what most reliably builds instinct. Preposition Survivor gives you a long run of such reps every time you play.
Prepositions with a fixed case: accusative (durch, für, gegen, ohne, um) and dative (aus, bei, mit, nach, seit, von, zu). Two-way prepositions such as an, auf, in and vor are not part of the current version, because the case depends on the whole sentence rather than on the preposition.
With an, auf, in, vor and the rest, the case comes from the whole sentence: accusative when the phrase answers Wohin? (ich gehe in die Küche), dative when it answers Wo? (ich bin in der Küche). A prompt that shows only the preposition and two article forms cannot be scored fairly, so the current version sticks to prepositions with a fixed case.
Your crowd is both your score and your life bar. Every correct article adds a survivor; every wrong one costs you two. Special gates take the stakes even higher: shield gates occasionally protect you from the next wrong answer, and rare double/halve gates can double your entire crowd on a correct answer - or halve it on a wrong one. Reach zero survivors and the run ends.
Because they combine three difficulties at once: choosing the right preposition (which often doesn't map to English - 'on' is auf or an depending on context), assigning it the right case, and producing the right article form. Drilling them as one integrated unit - preposition plus article, as a chunk - is, in our experience, what most reliably keeps all three plates spinning, and it's what this game asks you to do.
Because telling you would turn the task into recognition - and recognition isn't what you need in a real conversation. By showing only the preposition and asking you to pick the right article, the game pushes you into recall, which cognitive science consistently ranks as the single most effective form of practice. It's a harder, stickier kind of rep.
Yes - the classic 'aus-bei-mit-nach-seit-von-zu' rhythm or song. Sing it 20 times and the list locks in for life. The accusative set is shorter and easier: 'durch-für-gegen-ohne-um'. But knowing the list is only half the battle - the other half is firing the correct article in real sentences, which is what Preposition Survivor actually trains.
With around 10 minutes of daily training, many learners notice less hesitation on the fixed-accusative and fixed-dative sets after a few weeks. People learn at different speeds, so treat that as a rough order of magnitude rather than a promise.