We investigated the effects of in-game learning supports' timing in a game called Physics Playground where we randomly assigned 149 students (M[subscript age] = 14, SD = 0.96) to receive learning supports either Before (n = 50) or After (n = 46) playing game levels--a no-support Control (n = 53) condition was included. We found that students assigned to the two treatment conditions visited fewer game levels, but spent more time per level, and reported lower frustration levels than those assigned to the Control condition. Although students in the After condition had lower in-game performance measures than those in the Control condition, they achieved higher near- and far-transfer scores on the posttest after controlling for gameplay success and pretest scores.