Educational games

Early Learning Teaching Your Child - Other Topics
1

I’m looking to add more educational aspects to an animal game I made for android phones/tablets.

Currently it shows the type of animal(horse, pig, sheep, zebra, elephant, antelope, etc), what each likes to eat, and where each comes from. The animals play various sounds and move around the stable.

Any ideas for other information to include? I was thinking of recording each phrase being read in both English and Spanish, maybe even Russian, and others. So it would say “Arabian Horses like to eat grasses, grains, and plants. They are originally from the Arabian Peninsula.”, or “Asian elephans like to eat grasses, grains and plants. They come from Asia”.

Any ideas for other simple things I could include about each? I made some other games and realized some were too difficult for the younger crowd, so I’m trying to understand what they’re interested in. I assume a lot of automated actions by the animals that they can watch, and some elements of interactivity like triggering sounds, and such. It’s basically a trip to the zoo.

Thanks!

Edit:: Heres an example gameplay video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEvT0w7FmxQ

2

Could they possibly feed the animals? And don’t forget the baby animals and what they are called,etc.

3

Thanks for that baby part, that’s easy to add and I found a huge list of most animals that has what males are called what females are called, and what a group is called along with babies. I was considering spawning a large animal with a miniature one posing as a baby. I don’t have baby models of everything but figure a miniature version of the adult might be enough for kids.

I was thinking of feeding the animals. That would probably be worthwhile.

4

Can you group your zoo by country of origin or amphibian, reptile, mammal? Even adding in an ifomation post decribing the features of mammals, reptiles etc.
Multiple language choices are a good idea.
You know this forum could keep you busy making custom apps for years! I am sure we could make many suggestions!

5

At the moment I only have mammals, but I could mention that each is a mammal.

I’m thinking I should just do the animal names in Spanish. Blasting kids with 5+ sentences for each animal could be a lot, but hearing horse in both languages while looking at a horse running around could probably be effective for teaching.

The animals I have [4 horses, pony, sheep, pig, german shepherd, gemsbock antelope, regular antelope, 2 donkeys, a red fox, a white wolf, ] I have to stop there. Just getting audio for each is getting out of hand.

The stable scene is the educational part, I have another mini game I’m attaching where you wander around a pasture with a tap controller(camera looks down from above, touching screen moves in that direction). If you stand close enough to an animal, you can touch it to start taming. If you succeed the animal will follow you around. If you go back to the farmer/stable it puts the animal in the stable and gives you some points. Eventually I’ll have the farmer give quests like “gather all the sheep” but for now you just find animals and tame them for some arbitrary points and you raise a taming skill the more you tame. I also have 2 riding games where you steer a pig or horse from a first person perspective but it’s too complicated for toddlers.

So right now I’m at:
Name, diet, where they’re from, baby name, group name(herd, flock, etc), mammal, male, female. For each of the 16 animals I have. They also run around playing idle, graze, walk, run, jump animations and play various sounds.

Edit:: maybe a video would better show how I’m presenting the info. I don’t have the audio for reading each animal’s text yet, but on the kindle fire the animals look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEvT0w7FmxQ&feature=player_detailpage

Each speaker symbol in the image below is an animal out in the pasture. You don’t see them all at once, the camera looks down on the player from directly above.