No matter what your kids build, Bloxels brings kids imaginations to life in a hands-on STEAM activity that they will not want to put down!!
We recently attended the Science and Technology Fair in DC where we became hooked on Bloxels! The idea of making your very own video game based on your design was so exciting! The game is intended for ages 8+ but my 5 and 7 year old had a great time with it, with some parental help for the initial setup. There is no requirement for your children to understand complicated coding to enjoy Bloxels. Once the game was designed, even my 3-year-old has been asking to play his video game.
The premise behind this STEAM focused game, is that the children can use different colored blocks to create a layout for the game with their imagination as their guide! The different color blocks represent different items needed to create the game, i.e. green represents land and blue represents water (a color chart is of course included in the directions). Once the game’s layout is designed, you can make characters, villains and more to use in their uniquely created video game. Once you are done with each of your layouts, you use the app and mobile device to take a picture of the board and colored blocks and the app converts it into a video game for everyone to play! The kids’ imaginations come to life when they know their designs ends up as a video game!
Throughout the game, kids will try to make it through their course by collecting coins and working to escape the villains! Kids are able to add images to keep the game going as long as they want! In addition, there is a feature that allows them to share it to the “Infinity Wall” where they can share unique coordinates with friends so they can download the game to their device and play! (This feature is only possible if you create an account so we encourage parents to review account guidelines)
The Bloxels product can be purchased for home use as well as in educator packs! These games would be a great learning tool in the classroom to research a certain person or area and build a video game with the knowledge they have learned! In addition, to the standard Bloxels package, you can also get story builder cards, builder cards focused on careers, Star Wars focused packages, and more. Check out all of the offerings here!
Things to know before you start:
- Bloxels requires an app that is available on the google play store, the Apple App store or the Amazon App store for Kindle Fire.
- To access all of the features of the app, you need to set up an account for your child on the app, but it prompts children that they must have a parents permission. The app also asks for a parents email to set up the account. Limited functionality is available through a guest account.
- The app has challenges that walk a user through how to use it. The challenges are very helpful learning how to use the app. I highly recommend helping your child (based on age) through the challenges to ease familiarization.
- If a child changes their mind on their design (you know that will happen), you can either make the changes on the game board or in the app. This was helpful as we found tweaking in the app was a bit faster.
- Once you make a character and start playing, you can also add more characters to enhance the game options.
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