Klunskabouters
Development: Springlab
Software: Unity
Role: Game design, Interaction design, UX design, Level design, Interactive storytelling, Voice actor, Dialogue director
Target audience: Age group 2-4
Released: 2019
In Klunskabouters, the children help the handy gnome Tink to protect and care for her plants. Tink has a team of handy gnomes to help her, but they turn out to be not handy at all! They are very clumsy and almost all the plants need water. That is why Tink asks for the help of the children. The children have to work together to solve all kinds of puzzles.
Klunskabouters has been developed with the competence 'collaboration' as the main focus area. Collaboration is becoming increasingly important and is therefore also included in 21st century skills. Working together is not that easy for toddlers, they are known for being individualistic. Playing together, waiting your turn and sharing are still difficult concepts to understand at that age and therefore also difficult to learn, especially among the younger part of the target group (2-3 year olds).
We created this game to let toddlers solve puzzles together in an intuitive and accessible way and in this way stimulate and develop the competence of collaboration at a young age.
How it works
The players are standing in a garden. In this garden is a tap with running water and there are one or more plants that need to be watered. The goal is to get the water from the tap to the plants. In order to do this the players form a chain by holding hands. Basically the player's arms become the garden hose which transports the water to the plants.
As long as the first player keeps touching the tap and the chain remains unbroken the water will spray out of the free arm of the last player of the chain. When a plant is watered properly the plant revives and blooms beautifully. In this way they can water all the plants, but they must be careful not to step on the plants they have already watered!
Each following level becomes more and more difficult due to more plants that have to be watered, plants being further away from the tap, by adding obstacles and other challenges.
Development areas
This game focuses on the following development areas:
- Math: In Klunskabouters logical thinking, cause and effect thinking and seeing connections is important.
- Language: The children follow Tink's directions and communicate with each other to solve the puzzles.
- Socio-emotional: The game focuses around this development area mostly. Trying to solve the puzzles together and watching what others are doing and responding to it.
- Motor skills / Movement: The children form chains with their bodies to solve the puzzles.
My role
For this project I developed the concept, tested out prototypes with the target group and set out to create a fun game which would stimulate and teach collaboration and communication. For toddlers, this is definitely not an easy feat! They are known for being very individualistic at that age. The most important thing was to keep it simple, with the use of an easy to explain game mechanic and build upon that. One thing toddlers know and do daily is holding hands with their peers. By incorporating that into the game mechanic and using a simple concept like watering plants the game was very successful in getting the players to work together. Even teachers were amazed by the result!