Filed under: Kids

I just spent way too long (about 10 minutes) blasting a polar bear on a sled into a bunch of penguins using bombs and land mines. Can you say that? Well, you can now. Check out Polar PWND, an online physics game where the aforementioned polar bear on a sled is essentially a bowling ball, and the penguins are your pins.

The game uses a left-to-right platform view, and though the control scheme for placing objects could be better, it's serviceable and doesn't get in the way of the game play too much.

Polar PWND is not a long game; there are only 10 levels to beat. I see that as a plus, actually. I hate it when a Time Waster consumes me and it has 80 freaking levels and I can't get anything done because I have to beat just one more level... you know how it is. Polar PWND on the other hand can be completed in one brief sitting.

Thanks to Javier for the tip.

A computer's keyboard and mouse have never been very good as an interface to play a virtual piano, but The Virtual Keyboard takes an interesting approach that makes the resulting music much more appealing.

While you can individually click on any key on the piano's keyboard to hear the resulting tone, where it shines is in its ability to play predetermined chords just by pressing a number key on your computer's keyboard.

Each number from 1 to 7 represents a chord from the scale of the key you're playing in. You can choose what key to play in, and even shift the chord voicing lower or higher to better approximate the sound you want to hear.

What's great about this approach is that the numbers represent a valuable musical concept: musicians often use numbers to represent chords relative to one another, regardless of the key they're playing in. So, for example, Louie Louie could be represented by "1, 1, 1, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4" -- try it, and you'll see what I mean. It doesn't matter what key you're in, that pattern still sounds like Louie Louie when played with the right rhythm.

While The Virtual Keyboard seems like a toy or time waster, I can see it being of real value to songwriters who don't play piano, but need to figure out some chords for a song they're writing. It is limited by the fact that you can't play chords that don't naturally fall into the key the virtual piano is set to, but I'll take that simplification for the ease of use it offers in return.

Have you ever wished you could see what you look like with only one eye? Yeah, me neither. But, if you DO want to, there's a web-toy called Monoclopse that will let you do exactly that.

The site offers up a grid of other users' pictures that they created using Monoclopse, and you can click the camera icon to create your own. Rather than using your webcam to take a photo, Monoclopse asks you to upload a photo you already have. It then has you mark the centers of your eyes, and finally offers a fine-tuning scroll bar to get it just right.

Of course, if you have a Mac you can achieve a similar result with one of the effects in Photo Booth, but Monoclopse makes the process more simple, and more accurate.

It's silly, but fun.

Thanks to Thomas for the tip.

If you like retro-style gaming, you're going to love Don't Look Back, which is a modern platformer in a retro style by Terry Cavanagh.

The game manages to create fantastic ambiance with the use of only about 4 colors, and very simple music. The graphics are old-school, which is to say extremely pixelated. The control scheme is also very simple; you can move left and right and jump, and if you're lucky enough to get a gun, shoot it. You can only aim right and left, so you'd better hope the bad guys come to eye level at the right time.

The game opens with your character at a grave site, and he goes on a long adventure. I haven't completed the game yet, so I'm not sure where he's going, but it's the getting there that's the fun part anyway.

I have to admit that I'm not a huge fan of putting together jigsaw puzzles; it's just not an activity I would ever choose. On the other hand, when there's a partially completed puzzle sitting on a table, I can't walk by it without sitting down and starting to look for pieces to match up together.

I suspect this Time Waster is only going to appeal to the real die-hard jigsaw puzzle fans out there. Among the various games at Shockwave.com are a set of 10 jigsaw puzzles that you can put together online. Playing involves moving pieces around and rotating them until you get a match, at which point you hear a satisfying click. Of course, there's none of the tactile feedback of feeling the pieces in your hands, the smell of the cardboard, and the frustration of finishing a 1,000 piece puzzle and discovering that one piece has gone missing.

Hmm, maybe it's not such a bad idea.

The very oddly named VVVVVV (pronounced "the letter V six times) is a new retro game from Terry Cavanagh that is very reminiscent of the Commodore 64 days of gaming.

In fact, when the game loads, you see the classic blue loading screen with rainbow flickering borders, just like the good old days. The game also features 30 minutes of original chip music.

VVVVVV focuses on a single game mechanic, which is the player's ability to reverse his gravity. There is no jumping, no keys, no locks, no fighting; it's simply a platform game where the goal is to progress without impediment.

The demo for VVVVVV is available to be played at Kongregate, which amounts to the first two levels of the game. The full game, which can be purchased for Mac or PC, has many more levels, plus a mini game. You can also download the demo for Mac or PC.

I'm always looking for a good distraction when I'm sitting in classes I don't care about... which tends to be almost all of them. Rockface Rescue is a great, addictive game that I found on the BBC's website. From what I understand, the show followed a fictional rescue helicopter service that is plagued with disaster and love triangles. The show was cancelled in 2008. Luckily, the game is nothing like the show.

In the game, you're a helicopter pilot tasked with finding and rescuing hikers (and the occasional baby cow) stranded in the mountainous landscape of Glenntannoch. Each level gets a little longer and the terrain gets a little more challenging. To add to the realism, each hiker has a life meter that can be either green, yellow or red. As you can imagine, a good strategy might be to get all the red guys first since they're probably pretty critical.

Be careful not to knock your rescuer around too much or run out of fuel or you're going down too. The controls are really simple - left, right, up and down are all you really need to know. The training and five individual missions are addictive and I'm yet to get through the entire game. Check it out!

I can't bring myself not to post this silly little time waster. On one hand, I'm surprised we haven't previously covered it, but on the other hand, it's so simple and inane that I guess it's not really that much of a surprise.

Simplicity and inanity aside, ZeFrank's Frog is far more entertaining than it has any right to be. It's a simple site with a Flash-animated frog, and if you accept the dialog that asks to use your microphone, the frog will open and close its mouth when you talk, based on the amplitude it detects on the microphone. That's it.

Simple, right?

So how come I can't bring myself to close the page?

Who doesn't love blowing stuff up? It's even better when it's part of a physics puzzle game. Dynamite Blast puts these compelling ingredients together into a fun little game, where the goal is to complete each level's puzzle using only explosives as your tool. Sometimes you're trying to destroy structures, or maybe send a motorcycle flying.

Currently I'm stuck on a level where you have to bring down a crane that is hanging over some police cars, without touching the cars. The structure needs to be below a yellow line, so you can't only partially destroy it.

Of course, as soon as you blow up one girder, the whole thing starts to topple in a chain reaction. It feels very much like trying to implode a building, but with less ramifications if you mess it up.

For about a year now, kids with Xbox 360s have been able to create their own games with Microsoft's Kodu. Over 200,000 downloads later, Kodu has arrived on the PC. Kodu lets kids create characters and maps, and program their own events. It might not be complex and hard to learn, but it's fun and it gets kids hooked on programming early. You can download a preview version now and try it out for yourself.

That's why so many schools want to get their hands on the PC version. The move from console to desktop means Kodu is even easier to control, using the mouse and keyboard, and it also means kids can share their games online and in the classroom, even with friends who don't have Xboxes.

The creator of Kodu, Matt MacLaurin, was inspired by his young daughter, and now kids in over 60 schools worldwide are playing with it, too. Who knows, maybe one of them will be the next Sid Meier or Will Wright!

[via VentureBeat]

Pong is such a classic game, what could possibly be done to make it feel fresh and creative? How about using browser windows as game elements? This version of Pong by Stewdio launches three pop-up windows when you press the P (for play) button -- two paddles and a "ball".

You can play against the computer using the arrow keys to move your paddle up and down, or you can choose to play against another human who can use the A and Z keys to move their paddle up and down.

Given the unorthodox way the game was implemented, the gameplay is quite faithful, and the graphics refresh fast enough for it to feel snappy. Rather than the typical smooth movement of the paddles you might expect, this version of Pong uses 5 positions from top to bottom on the screen, and each tap of a direction key moves one space in the chosen direction. This allows you to move very quickly when necessary using multiple taps.

While Stewdio's Pong was obviously done as a sort of proof of concept, it's a completely playable version of the game. For some reason the game doesn't seem to keep score, but that's really the only thing that is missing.

[via UNEASYsilence]

Pulsus is one of the best physics games I've played in a while. The concept is simple, but the puzzles are challenging enough to keep things interesting. The way it works is that there is an emitter that is putting out purple, orange, and blue particles equally in all directions. The emitter will continue shooting out particles until the countdown timer gets to zero. Your goal is to herd the particles into the receptacles and fill them before the time expires.

There are two different kinds of receptacles, the grey ones that will accept any color particle, and the color-coded receptacles that will also accept any color particle, but when the wrong color go into them, it decreases the meter. Did that make sense? Maybe it's better to just give the game a go.

Your only tools to control where the particles go are forces, which are small circles that you can place that act on the particles. Grey forces repel all particles, and color-coded forces attract like-colors, and repel all others. You get a limited number of forces to solve each level.

The game's graphics are simple but effective, and the game's audio sets the atmosphere beautifully. Pulsus manages to be a time-based puzzle game that is both stimulating and relaxing in equal measures. It won't take you long to complete the game, but it's still definitely worth your time.

The best collection of Linux educational software for all ages that I know of is the openSUSE-Edu Li-f-e (Linux for Education) Live DVD. You can get it at http://en.opensuse.org/Education/Live#Download. There are some screen shots here.

This is a Live DVD - you simply place the DVD in the computer's DVD drive and reboot the machine from it. When the machine comes up, you will be running Linux. Normally, the software won't write to your computer's hard drive unless you specifically ask it to. So a couple of reminders:

• You'll want to plug in a USB disk drive / memory stick for documents you want to save or share with other users or machines.
• When you shut the computer down and remove the DVD, it will come back up just as it was before.

There's a wide variety of "edutainment" software on this DVD for kids 12 years old and up. For religious education there's BibleTime, a Bible study tool. For chemistry, there's Avogadro, Chemtool, gElemental, and XDrawChem. For astronomy, there's the Stellarium planetarium simulator, and for math there's Dr. Geo, Euler, K3DSurf, KSEG, wxMaxima and Xaos.

For the younger children, six years old and up, there are four packages designed to teach programming: EToys from the One Laptop Per Child project, Scratch from MIT, Little Wizard and XLogo. Moving on to games, one of the best collections of games for younger children, two years old and up, is GCompris. There is also the Sugar desktop from the One Laptop Per Child project.

Does the fast pace of action games make you anxious? If so, have I got the time waster for you. Balls 2 is a game that involves no explosions, no timer, and no lives. You simply mouse over a bunch of colored balls, causing them to split into four smaller colored balls. If you do this enough times, the balls eventually disappear, revealing a random image underneath. The developer says that the image is updated weekly.

The game has the same sort of zen feeling as popping bubble wrap, with a bit of repetitive stress injury thrown in. In fact, it's easier to play Balls 2 using a touch pad.

To be honest, I didn't have the patience to actually reveal the hidden image -- it takes a long time to get there. Let us know in the comments what you find.

Paper Cannon is a fairly typical physics-based bomb-shooting cannon game. If you enjoy this sort of game, it has enough charm and challenge to be worth your time; if physics shooting games are not your cup of tea, you'll probably want to take a pass.

The goal in Paper Cannon is to kill all of the creepy one-eyed bunnies in each level with the fewest number of shots possible. Thankfully, unlike many similar games, there is no limit to the number of bombs you can shoot. While you might think that would mean the game is too easy, you'd be wrong; the game levels are built very cleverly, so that the number of bombs you shoot are not nearly as important as the placement of the shots.

Instead of using the position of the mouse to determine the strength of each shot, shot strength is determined by how long you hold down the mouse button. This makes it very hard to repeat exactly the same shot, and it plays havoc when you have moving barriers because the timing of your shot power often doesn't line up well with the barrier.

The game has that lazy and tired "paper" theme, where instead of creating full-color compelling graphics, the game elements look like sketches on graph paper. Luckily, the gameplay is strong enough to overcome this unfortunate choice by the developer.