An educational game by The Learning Company, in which players solve increasingly challenging logic puzzles to help the Zoombinis escape to a brand new home.
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I received this game as a child and really enjoyed playing it, however, I have been unable to progress past the second difficulty level to this day. I have undiagnosed learning difficulties which make things challenging for me. However, I have found that I can complete the mirror reflection and pizza games without as much difficulty. I am dumb as F
There's something on that I don't like!
A defining childhood game for me, and holds up.
I'm not much of a connoisseur in the ways of edutainment given I only had a handful of edutainment games a kid. Nevertheless, this one was among my favorites, if not my most favorite.
The Zoombinis are silly, peaceful pacifists who live on their very own island. One day, they trust the wrong group of merchants, the Bloats, who swindle them out of their own home and quite literally enslave them. The Zoombinis make a break for it, but to make it less conspicuous, decide to travel in small groups at a time. The Zoombinis make it to the main land, where it's up to you to escort them through the dangerous locales and dens of strange creatures you'll encounter along the way.
Like the title suggests, this game is a test of your logical skills. This includes process of elimination, pattern recognition, and planning ahead. Many of the puzzles are linked to the physical attributes of the Zoombinis themselves, which you can customize at the start. To make it difficult to cheese, you're only allowed to make 2 of the same exact Zoombinis. Throughout the adventure, should you fail a puzzle too many times, you'll start to lose Zoombinis one at a time. As a result, there's very little room for brute forcing. Not to worry though, as they only return to the previous checkpoint, with 3 checkpoints in total including the start. In total, there are 400 Zoombinis to save. You can only take 16 Zoombinis at a time with you, and you cannot continue from a checkpoint if you have any less. Saving every few batches of 16 increases the difficulty of the game. Despite being marketed towards children, make no mistake: these puzzles can get hard towards the end, even for adults. Even so, there's a small but highly varied selection of puzzles. You play them in the same order, though there's a split in the middle of the map. If you keep taking the same path, those puzzles get harder each time you play. Should a puzzle be too difficult for you, there's a practice mode and you also have the ability to leave Zoombinis at a checkpoint and go back to the start to get a new batch instead.
The world of the Zoombinis is appealing and calm. There isn't much in terms of music, but I assume it's to help you focus. Music is there, albeit subdued. It tends to be chill with a hint of charisma to match the feeling of pushing forth into unexplored territory. The visuals are well-drawn and have a bit of a story book feeling to them. The NPCs you encounter are wacky and charming, and not to mention quotable. Anyone who has played this will never forget Arno the Pizza Troll, who desperately wants a pizza but refuses to tell you what he wants on it. The hardships and challenges of the Zoombinis are narrated by an eccentric narrator who really wants to see the poor things make it to the legendary Zoombiniville.
It might not be the best edutainment game, but it's certainly among the best. It definitely accomplishes everything it sets out to do. If you have a hard time tracking down the original version, there's a remake on Steam that updates the visuals and touches nothing else. Both visual styles have their extremely miniscule ups and downs, but I think I prefer the original solely for nostalgia. Either way, I highly recommend this game if you're ever going through a 90's edutainment spree.
The Zoombinis are silly, peaceful pacifists who live on their very own island. One day, they trust the wrong group of merchants, the Bloats, who swindle them out of their own home and quite literally enslave them. The Zoombinis make a break for it, but to make it less conspicuous, decide to travel in small groups at a time. The Zoombinis make it to the main land, where it's up to you to escort them through the dangerous locales and dens of strange creatures you'll encounter along the way.
Like the title suggests, this game is a test of your logical skills. This includes process of elimination, pattern recognition, and planning ahead. Many of the puzzles are linked to the physical attributes of the Zoombinis themselves, which you can customize at the start. To make it difficult to cheese, you're only allowed to make 2 of the same exact Zoombinis. Throughout the adventure, should you fail a puzzle too many times, you'll start to lose Zoombinis one at a time. As a result, there's very little room for brute forcing. Not to worry though, as they only return to the previous checkpoint, with 3 checkpoints in total including the start. In total, there are 400 Zoombinis to save. You can only take 16 Zoombinis at a time with you, and you cannot continue from a checkpoint if you have any less. Saving every few batches of 16 increases the difficulty of the game. Despite being marketed towards children, make no mistake: these puzzles can get hard towards the end, even for adults. Even so, there's a small but highly varied selection of puzzles. You play them in the same order, though there's a split in the middle of the map. If you keep taking the same path, those puzzles get harder each time you play. Should a puzzle be too difficult for you, there's a practice mode and you also have the ability to leave Zoombinis at a checkpoint and go back to the start to get a new batch instead.
The world of the Zoombinis is appealing and calm. There isn't much in terms of music, but I assume it's to help you focus. Music is there, albeit subdued. It tends to be chill with a hint of charisma to match the feeling of pushing forth into unexplored territory. The visuals are well-drawn and have a bit of a story book feeling to them. The NPCs you encounter are wacky and charming, and not to mention quotable. Anyone who has played this will never forget Arno the Pizza Troll, who desperately wants a pizza but refuses to tell you what he wants on it. The hardships and challenges of the Zoombinis are narrated by an eccentric narrator who really wants to see the poor things make it to the legendary Zoombiniville.
It might not be the best edutainment game, but it's certainly among the best. It definitely accomplishes everything it sets out to do. If you have a hard time tracking down the original version, there's a remake on Steam that updates the visuals and touches nothing else. Both visual styles have their extremely miniscule ups and downs, but I think I prefer the original solely for nostalgia. Either way, I highly recommend this game if you're ever going through a 90's edutainment spree.
One of the unsung pinnacles of edutainment - numerous logic puzzles, colorful characters, and challenges that really require you to stop and map out how to do certain things. It is a game that forces you to think through memorization, hypothesis testing, and organizational thinking.
The first video game I can definitively remember playing. Played on the family PC.