At it’s more difficult settings, this would even make a great alternative to a ‘brain training’ style game for adults - the puzzles get hard and interesting, no matter the age. This is quite possibly the best game you could buy for a child, and the age range it targets is surprisingly large - the difficulties vary enough to allow children of all ages and abilities to enjoy and learn from it. I still find myself saying ‘MORE TOPPINGS’ along with Arno. The characters are incredibly entertaining, despite being a puzzle game with little real interaction, the game uses environment, animation and some dialogue to great effect to breathe life into it’s characters - the Pizza Trolls are a favourite, and are timelessly entertaining. The game slowly increases the difficulty, teaching the child how to think to solve the puzzles before hitting them with the hard stuff. This is a simple start, but as the game goes on, the puzzles become deeper and more complex, with interesting solutions. For example, the first puzzle gives the player two bridges, each will reject Zoombinis with certain traits (that the other accepts) - the player must work out which traits are allowed on each bridge in order to get all the Zoombinis across. Most of the puzzles involve sorting the Zoombinis (who are composed from a set of features - hair, eyes, nose, ‘feet’), into groups or applying them to situations.

I never saw the game as ‘an educational game’ as a child, despite it teaching me a lot. None of them fall into the usual educational game traps (quizzes, etc…), but rather teach by letting the player experiment, learn and apply their understanding in an iterative way - this is the best way to learn, and it is great fun. The puzzles teach a variety of skills, all focusing on logic and problem solving, with a little mathematics thrown in. There is an overarching plot where the player is helping all the Zoombinis travel across the map to a new home, giving a long-term goal.

These puzzles are interesting, varied and have really engaging theming, with characters that bring the world to life. The game is a series of 12 puzzles, each having four difficulty levels that range from simple to teach you the basics up to hard enough to make anyone, child or adult, think a bit. As a child I sunk many, many hours into Zoombinis, and it taught me a lot about logic, problem solving and maths, and sparked lifelong interests in those areas - all while I enjoyed myself massively - it was easily one of my favourite games. Zoombinis (formerly ‘The Logical Journey of The Zoombinis’) is probably the best educational game around, and while that isn’t saying too much, it manages to be an extremely engaging and fun game, while also being very educational.

A game that defined my childhood has been re-released, with a graphical update.

Zoombinis game 2015