Educational games intend to make learning more enjoyable, but carry the potential cost of compromising learning efficiency by consuming both instructional time and student cognitive resources. Therefore, instead of creating an educational game, the authors create a learning environment with game-like elements, the aspects of games that are engaging but that do not negatively impact the learning effectiveness of the system. This paper presents an experimental framework for determining the effect of game-like elements in terms of their benefits such as enhancing engagement and learning, as well as their costs such as distraction and working memory overload. As a first experimental step, the authors develop four versions of a math tutor with different degrees of game-likeness, such as adding narrative and visual feedback. Based on a study with 297 students, it is found that students reported more satisfaction with the tutor with more game-like elements, but there was no conclusive difference in learning among the different versions.