Games
Contents
Introduction
The OLPC is an education project but that doesn't mean there is no room for fun. On the contrary, fun must be integrated into the child's educational experience.
Ideas
There are many constructionist game ideas to be found here. In order to view them you need to go to Squeakland, download Squeak, and install the SqueakPluginInstaller. Alan Kay is likely to have the entire Squeak environment up and running on the OLPC hardware soon, however, not all regions will want to adopt that as an all-encompassing platform. The same types of things can be implemented in the OLPC Python Environment.
Board games
Chess would be a natural game to have. The World Chess Federation is one of the most inclusive organizations in the world. Many free players, graphical boards, and internet players are available.
Go is a popular strategy game with rules simple enough for a child to learn. It has free internet resources comparable to chess.
Checkers and Reversi are also popular and easy to learn.
Oware and similar sowing games are popular in african countries.
Card games are also popular in many of the target countries.
The networked evironment in which the laptop is embedded would be natural for peer-to-peer multi-player games. Many of these games could provide both a computer opponent and the ability to connect with other laptop players.
Paper-and-pencil games
Paper and pencil games are games that are typically multiple-player, played with pencil and paper or on a blackboard. Some — like Dots and Boxes, Tic-tac-toe, or Gomoku — involve logic and strategy, while others — like Exquisite corpse or Eat Poop You Cat — require visual or literary creativity. Games like Hangman can be played alone or in a group to reinforce vocabulary and spelling. Having an OLPC version of these games may be useful in situations where paper is limited or the players are separated geographically.
Puzzles
Someone has suggested porting various puzzle games to Sugar.
Bolo
Bolo is an old mac-based game which seems ideally suited to this project:
- It runs on basic hardware,
- It takes a minute to learn (and a lifetime to master),
- Its network requirements seem to match that provide by the OLPC laptop.
See here: [1]
Reviews
There are probably too many review sites specialized in games, but how many analyze them from a pedagogical point of view? Some links to them:
- A review list (that migrated away from this site) can be found here, its main page is here.
- Happy Penguin has categories for kids, board games, puzzle, simulation, strategy, interactive fiction, ...
