I have six-year-old twins and would like to start introducing them to parser IF. What are your recommendations for games whose vocabularies and intricacies are within understanding–given some help from Dad?
Try this IFDB search for games tagged “kid-friendly” with at least 20 reviews, sorted by rating. https://ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=ratu&searchfor=tag%3Akid-friendly+%23ratings%3A20-
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Thanks, all. We’ve started in on Lost Pig, an old one I remember fondly. My initial thought is that this one was probably a bit hard for them to grok, and it is (they don’t know what to think of Grunk’s second-language interpretation of English), but they are really enjoying it even so! I’d love to hear of anyone’s experience with kids in the 5–7 age range.
For anyone who comes to this thread looking for recommendations, I should also mention that a number of the games here look pretty kid-friendly: http://genericgeekgirl.com/games/
Lost Pig is a rather difficult game, despite its reputation for being good for newbies/kids.
When I played it with my 6yo, I told her that we should make a map, which she enjoyed doing, and when we got to the color wheel, she drew that out as well. (It’s described in a way as to make it confusing to visualize IMO.)
Throughout, I strongly nudged her towards the right questions. Why do you think this box has a dent in it? Why do you think this brick is sticky? Why did the pole stick to Gronk?
We had a good time, but just barely.
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Aotearoa is great for kids too, and has a lot of helpful features.
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Found the time to play another session of Lost Pig with my girls. They loved making the map. We drew a compass rose on it so they could work out the directions themselves. I’ve had to stop for lots of explanations and prompting throughout (including trying to explain what a “hint” is), but they are really enjoying it. Spelling, typing, understanding that a computer isn’t a person and you have to phrase things very specifically—these are some of the other things they are getting out of it.
It’s far from pure play, but so far it’s a good time. Direct progress in the story is pretty slow, though!
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