With my first ever Kickstarter purchase, I got the kids Robot Turtles for Christmas. We played for the first time this evening. Both girls successfully navigated the course the first time, unlocking the ice walls, and Rachel then also unlocked the laser cards that melt the ice.
The game is meant to teach basic computer programming skills. There are cards that move the turtles forward, rotate right, and rotate left. The players construct a "program", first one card at a time, then later in longer sequences. In addition to the ice walls, they will also eventually unlock stone walls, impervious to lasers, and crates, which can be pushed around.
I'm looking forward to playing more with them, and watching them learn to solve increasingly complex puzzles.
The final card type to unlock is the Function Frog, which lets them design and repeatedly invoke subroutines. Then they'll really be on their way.
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Turtle master
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2 comments:
Huh? What is kickstarter?
Kickstarter is a website for crowd-sourcing funding of projects. The project owners set a goal for funding, and if the backers pledge enough in the allotted time, then their projects gets funded, otherwise the backers get their money back.
For the ones I've seen, backers are usually promised some kind of reward for their pledge. In the case of a physical product like Robot Turtles, the game itself was one reward, but there were others, too, like getting your name in the Thank You section of the manual.
There are lots of different types of projects there. A local Pittsburgh chef is trying to fund a new restaurant through Kickstarter. The Veronica Mars movie was funded through Kickstarter. Musicians and writers use it, too, and 3D printer manufacturers.
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