Games
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. See also Game development for more.
Classes of games
Board games
- Chess -- 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 - a popular strategy game with rules simple enough for a child to learn. Free internet resources comparable to chess.
- Checkers
- Reversi - popular and easy to learn.
- Oware, similar sowing games, popular in african countries.
- See also Board Games
Card games
- Hearts
- Check for local games in countries.
(A natural setting for a flash games framework)
Other networked games
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 telephone (passed-on storytelling or image-drawing)
- Paper and pencil games are games that are typically multiple-player, played with pencil and paper or on a blackboard.
- Dots and Boxes, Tic-tac-toe
- Gomoku
- Exquisite corpse or Eat Poop You Cat
- Hangman -- solitaire or in a group for vocabulary and spelling
Puzzles
- Simon Tatham's puzzle games
Uncategorized games
- Bolo: an old mac-based game which seems ideally suited to this project: runs on basic hardware, takes a minute to learn (and a lifetime to master), network requirements seem to match that provide by the OLPC laptop.
- On the OLPC Games mailing list, Phil Hassey has suggested that his collection of open-source Pygame games could be ported to the OLPC, if someone was looking for something to do.
- Mubbles (preliminary name, an idea right now): A playground for visual objects programmed by kids in python (pygame) where they can show off their mathematical, physical and programming knowledge (and "hack" each other :) ).
GDC 2007
Many game developers submitted ideas and screenshots of games for the XO for a game development contest at GDC 2007. The two winning entrants received developer machines at the conferene to make their games a reality on the XO. These were:
- Magica by Juan Gril of Joju Games - a game combining team quizzes and magic
- Constellations by John Swisshelm of Georgia Tech, a game for a library of card-based games
Other well received entries included
- Tristan Lewis's Color Battle game for carving out and protecting areas of color, which won honorable mention for the most original concept
- Christian Schlager's role-playing Zamé
- Peter Gault's elaborate "Detective" game
- Geoffrey Hom's "NameQuest" for learning various languages
- Jim Falgatter's keyboarding application, a previously written game which he is trying to integrate with TamTam
Constructionist ideas
There are many constructionist game ideas to be found on Squeakland. To view the results, go to Squeakland and download Squeak, and install the SqueakPluginInstaller. Not all regions may want to adopt Squeak as an all-encompassing platform. The same types of things can be implemented in the OLPC Python Environment...