I would like to showcase a new iPad game from CognitiveKid called Ansel Clair’s Adventures in Africa, developed with Unity. It is an educational app for children aged from 4-9 years old. The goal of the app is to educate while being so fascinating that kids do not even think of it as learning. It was developed by a team of 5-6 people over a period of about 4 months (I was hired as a consultant to help with the programming).
Ansel is an intergalactic travel photographer. He has come to earth with his robot Clair, who is very knowledgeable, to learn all about Africa and the wonderful planet Earth. As they travel throughout Africa, they explore the Nile River Valley, the Sahara Desert, and the Serengeti Plain. Each area is filled with animals and objects that can be tapped to interact with, to learn more about, to play puzzles, or to collect real world pictures of for their Travel Log.
We developed several unique puzzles: a pyramid maze controlled by the accelerometer, a time telling puzzle where the child has to assemble the hours and minutes on a clock, an animal fur matching puzzle, and two “wipe the screen” interactions (in one the screen gets covered by blowing sand in the Sahara, in the other raindrops cover the screen during the rainy season in the Serengeti). Other interactions include: dragging firewood over to start a fire so Ansel does not get cold at night; feeding hay to a camel; cooking eggs on the hood of a jeep in the hot African sun; dragging the Sun or Moon down to change from night to day; and correctly ordering the stages of a frog’s life cycle. We also created a Travel Log that the children really enjoy pasting photos into.
One of the neat features of this app is that children can focus on what interests them the most. Some kids spend all their time taking photos and putting them in the Travel Log. Others love the maze puzzle, or diving deeper and reading short articles about camels or elephants. My niece loves to play the part where the African vulture throws up on Ansel, trying to scare him away.
We would love to hear what you guys think. Check it out on iTunes, or watch our demo video on the Ansel Clair website.
