http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/LogicalJourneyOfTheZoombinis
Find out in Zoombinis, an updated version of the classic, award-winning 1990's puzzle game Logical Journey of the Zoombinis. The small blue creatures, each with distinct personalities and appearances, are escaping imprisonment by the evil Bloats, who have taken over the Zoombinis' home.
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Aug 05, 2015 Zoombinis is a re-creation of the classic, award-winning 1990’s puzzle game Logical Journey of the Zoombinis. The small blue creatures, each with distinct personalities and appearances, are escaping imprisonment by the evil Bloats who have taken over the Zoombinis’ home. Oct 29, 2015 Download Zoombinis for macOS 10.6.6 or later and enjoy it on your Mac. Play Zoombinis and guide the little blue creatures through fun and increasingly challenging puzzles on their way to a new home. Zoombinis is a re-creation of the classic, award-winning 1990's puzzle game Logical Journey of the Zoombinis. The small blue creatures, each.
The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis is the first and most well-known in a series of Edutainment Games. The story focuses on the Zoombinis, an idyllic race of cute blue Waddling Heads, each with different appearances and personalities, who live in peace on Zoombini Isle. One day, a race called the Bloats came in and offered to improve their trade routes and infrastructure. But the Zoombinis soon found themselves exploited as underpaid laborers for the Bloats, and so they set out to find a new homeland across the sea.
At the start of each trip, the player can customize (or randomly generate) a group of 16 Zoombinis. The puzzles often involve the Zoombinis' features - hair, eyes, noses, and feet - and often require trial and error in order to figure out the rules. The puzzles themselves range from braving difficult terrain (crossing bridges over allergic cliffs or traveling over a chasm in a bubble), to getting past the locals (such as the Pizza Trolls or the Fleens), to simply getting them all in the right place (in their seats on a barge, or in rooms in a hotel).
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At the very end, the Zoombinis that were successfully led through the dangers find themselves in Zoombiniville, where they build more and greater monuments as the population grows.
Unsurprisingly, the series has a Wiki.
Had two much less famous sequels, Zoombinis: Mountain Rescue and Zoombinis: Island Odyssey.
- In Mountain Rescue, after a group of Zoombinis get lost exploring a mountain, they come across another group of explorers from a race called Boolies, who have also lost their way from their hometown of Booliewood. The Zoombinis must help the Boolies by bringing them back home in order to summon the Boolies' leader, the Grand Boolie Boolie.
- In Island Odyssey, the Zoombinis discover the Bloats have since abandonded Zoombini Isle, leaving it an ecological wasteland. The Zoombinis send a team to survey the damage, who discover that the local Zerble moth population is on the verge of extinction. The Zoombinis set out to help the Zerbles and restore the ecology of Zoombini Isle.
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In 2015, a remake of Logical Journey, simply titled Zoombinis, was successfully funded on Kickstarter. It was released on iOS and Android shortly afterward, and later on Windows and Mac (through Steam) and Kindle. There were multiple bugs in the game as released that make some of the puzzles freeze at times, and make others unsolvable, and there appears to be no support for fixing them.
Tropes in the game:
- 100% Completion:
- A new monument is built in Zoombiniville the first time the player completes a path on a new difficulty setting without losing any Zoombinis. As noted below, some paths are harder than others.
- There's also the task of bringing every Zoombini to Zoombiniville. Should you succeed, the narrator will loop through the generic 'success' messages whenever you're in the Zoombiniville area.
- Added Alliterative Appeal: Many of the puzzle names: Pizza Pass, Titanic Tattooed Toads, Mirror Machine, etc.
- All of the Zoombiniville monuments have this in spades. Even the verb describing how the monument was built is often alliterative with the building's name.
- All Trolls Are Different: Arno, Willomaen and Shyler are referred to as 'Pizza Trolls,' but they resemble walking trees without leaves. They also love pizza and sundaes, but are extremely fussy about their toppings.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: The Zoombinis are blue and the Fleens are green, though neither of them are particularly humanoid.
- Anti Poop-Socking: One of the narrator's lines in Zoombiniville reassures the player that they've done enough for now and they should go get some fresh air.
- Armless Biped: Some Zoombinis. The rest don't even have legs, bouncing around on springs or floating around on propellers.
- Ascended Meme:
- In the Kickstarter campaign for the remake, the lowest-tier rewards were 'Just the toppings', 'Come on, more stuff!', and 'The perfect (digital) pizza', all of which are based on lines from Arno the Pizza Troll.
- The trailer for the campaign itself also included several. It started off with Arno shouting 'MORE TOPPINGS!!' The trailer then goes on to say, 'More fun! More ways to play! More graphics and sound! More adventure! MORE ARNO!!'
- Bee Afraid: Apparently, bees have no problem with Zoombinis, but they do have a problem with Fleens. Then again, the Fleens were the ones who disturbed them first.
- Beef Gate: The second half of the game ramps up the difficulty of the puzzles; the Fleens minigame specifically seems to exist to punish players who 'cheated' some of the earlier games by creating twins, as you have to find the three Fleens that will trigger the swarm.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Shyler the pizza troll; his Shrinking Violet persona doesn't stop him from getting violent with the Zoombinis if they don't get his pizza right.
- Black Bead Eyes: One of the eyes options for Zoombinis in the remake.
- Blatant Lies: Captain Cajun opens up his level with 'Well, sit wherever you want to, I don't really care.' He cares. Although it's true for the very first Zoombini that sits down.
- Bleak Level: The last three puzzles are all in a cave and have gloomier music and creepier ambient sounds compared to the rest of the game. It's also the only leg of the journey where you don't meet anyone new.
- Cast of Snowflakes: In the original, half the Zoombinis are different in appearance (the other half are the first half's twins). In the remake, it is possible to have more than twins, just not on the same crew anymore.
- Circling Birdies: Zoombinis that have recently taken a tumble will have stars circling their heads for a moment.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: The Bloats came off as malignant business owners, which fit in with the game's description of Zoombinis and them with business-like manner. Two major examples being exploitation of Zoombinis as menial laborers and turning their island into wasteland Island Odyssey
- Cyclops: Some of the Zoombinis only have one eye.
- Digitized Sprites: The first game uses pixel art (and the remake uses vectors), but the two TLC games have pre-rendered CGI images.
- Does Not Like Spam: The Pizza Trolls have certain toppings that they hate. Another thing to note is that each topping is favored by only one troll at most; the others hate that topping.
- Evil Counterpart: The Fleens may well be this to the Zoombinis. On easier difficulties, each trait they have even directly corresponds to a Zoombini trait. On harder difficulties, their traits correspond to another Zoombini trait.
- Apparently, the Fleens used to be an offshoot of the Zoombinis until they were mutated.. by bad hair products.
- Evil Laugh: One of the several snippets of narration that can play at the Shade Tree rest stop includes the narrator bursting into one after boasting that the most dangerous trials are yet to come.
- Excuse Plot: The Zoombinis need to make it to their safe haven, and only you can help! Are you a bad enough dude to help the Zoombinis?
- Floating in a Bubble: This allows your Zoombinis to cross the Bubblewonder Abyss. Of course, there are many obstacles in the way..
- Giant Enemy Crab: Harder difficulties of the Titanic Tattooed Toads level have these coming out of the water to block the way.
- Glass Smack and Slide: If you get mismatched images on the central crystal of the Mirror Machine, the crystal will lower into the path of the unfortunate Zoombini, who will smack face-first into the crystal and tumble into the abyss.
- Good Hair, Evil Hair: The Zoombinis have kids' hairstyles. The Fleens have punk/gangster hairstyles or headwear, and they're evil.
- Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: Gravitational cognizance variety at Hotel Dimensia. When a platform yanks itself out from underneath a Zoombini, the Zoombini won't fall until after he/she has looked down.
- Grid Puzzle
- Mudball Wall. Each color and design corresponds to a different point in the grid.
- Hotel Dimensia/Didimension Hotel is one with how the rooms are laid out.
- Growling Gut: It happens mostly to Shyler the Pizza Troll when he's hungry.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Though not very obvious due to her apron, Ulla Instantaneous, the innkeeper of Hotel Dimensia/Didimension Hotel, doesn't wear pants.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: From 'Not So Easy' to 'Very, Very Hard'.
- Inherently Funny Words: 'Snozzleberry' in Island Odyssey.
- Jet Pack: Some of the Fleens have them in place of feet.
- Large Ham: The narrator, and Arno the Pizza Troll.
- Living Crashpad: Defied - if a Zoombini is loitering where another Zoombini is about to fall, the first Zoombini will scramble out of the way.
- Luck-Based Mission: The Fleens puzzle can easily become this if you use twins. You may well be leaving some Zoombinis behind at Hotel Dimensia/Didimension Hotel if you place your first Zoombini in the wrong room on Very Hard.
- The Migration: The Zoombinis flee Bloat-controlled Zoombini Isle and seek a new place to settle.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Implied during the Mirror Machine puzzle. Some Zoombinis scream in terror as they hurtle over the gap in the tracks, others whoop in delight.note
- Non-Indicative Difficulty:
- The Titanic Tattooed Toads can be easier on Oh, So Hard than on Not So Easy. Thanks to the new lilypad-swapping wand, you have more options for solving the puzzle and can recover if you accidentally put a toad on the wrong path.
- Fleens! can be harder on Oh, So Hard than on Very Hard because only four Zoombinis can fit on the tree branch at once instead of the usual six. Since it takes three Zoombinis to lure the necessary Fleens down, you can only afford one wrong guess before you start losing Zoombinis.
- Hotel Dimensia can be harder on Very Hard difficulty than on Very, Very Hard due to the boarded-up rooms. On Very Hard, you can leave some Zoombinis with no place to go if you place the first ones wrong, and it's not easy to tell before you screw up irreversibly. Very, Very Hard adds more rooms, but none are boarded up, so perfect completion is always possible.
- Orphaned Series: Before the Kickstarter revived it, the Chain of Deals that publisher Broderbund went through was not easy on the Zoombinis at all. See the trivia page for details.
- The Pratfall: Often (but not always) accompanied by stars circling the unfortunate Zoombini.
- How Zoombinis land after being catapulted over Mudball Wall.
- The most common result of the actions taken in Video Game Cruelty Potential.
- The Quincy Punk: The Fleens are, for the most part, a bunch of little green Waddling Head Quincy Punks.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: The Zoombinis.
- Rock Monster: The Stone Guardians and the Allergic Cliffs.
- Rollercoaster Mine: The Mirror Machine puzzle features carts that Zoombinis have to ride. There's a gap in the tracks that each Zoombini has to fling themselves over - whether or not the central crystal has matching images determines whether the Zoombini makes it across with the cart or gets knocked off into the abyss.
- Solve the Soup Cans: The game is practically built on soup cans. Some of them make more sense in the context of the story than others, but they're all fairly outlandish. Slips into Alphabet Soup Cans at some points.
- Speaking Simlish: The NPCs speak English, but the Zoombinis and the Fleens communicate in nonsensical chatter.
- Super OCD: Captain Cajun will not let you sit on his boat if you don't share a similar attribute with the people next to you.
- There Are No Tents: Hotel Dimensia is a hotel in the wilderness run by a kind squirrel named Ulla Instantaneous. It's a safe place for the Zoombinis to stay in for the night, but getting into the hotel is a puzzle in itself.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Some Zoombinis do not sound happy about the prospect of being catapulted over Mudball Wall.
- Tone Shift: With possibly a hint of Cerebus Syndrome. The first leg of the journey is bright and silly. However, once the player passes Shade Tree, things get substantially darker (in terms of lighting and content) and more serious.
- Trial-and-Error Gameplay: The minigames require various amounts of trial and error in order for you to collect enough information to solve the puzzle. One of them (specifically, Fleens!) appears to be a member of this contingent, but can be figured out before sending any Zoombinis if you pay careful attention to the puzzle.
- At least, so long as you didn't make all or most of your Zoombini party out of sets of twins, which takes it past Trial-and-Error Gameplay and into Luck-Based Mission territory. For that matter, even if you just have a few duplicate Zoombinis, if one ends up on the branch then it's impossible to tell which twin you need to send out before trying it.
- Two Girls to a Team: There are three male Zoombini hairstyles and two female ones, though their actual genders are ambiguous.
- Unexplained Recovery: While the Zoombinis surviving failing most challenges to try again later are Hand Waved in the manual by saying they're resourceful, Bubblewonder Abyss shows Zoombinis being sucked into a vortex and vaporized if you fail. And yet, they're right back at Shade Tree afterwards. There's also the Easter Egg if you throw a Zoombini into the chasm in the Lion's Lair; they fall right back where they started, apparently from the ceiling.
- Updated Re-release: TERC came up with one on Kickstarter, but never bothered to fix the bugs afterward.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: Of course there's the obvious way (intentionally getting things wrong), but in examples that you won't be punished for, you can electrocute a Zoombini in Stone Rise by dragging them onto an unavailable space, and in the Lion's Lair, you can throw them into the chasm instead of placing them on the path. They wind up back where they started, but still.note
- Video-Game Lives: In certain areas, the number of 'chances' you have are represented by things like pegs keeping a door or bridge from collapsing, the number of Zoombinis on a tree branch, or a clock that ticks down to midnight.
- Waddling Head: The Zoombinis have no arms, and move stuff around by carrying it on their heads or pushing it. One of the Stone Guardians calls them 'little pebbles.' The ones that have feet do, however, have legs connecting their feet to their bodies.
Index
(Redirected from Zoombinis: Logical Journey)
Zoombinis | |
---|---|
Genre(s) | Educational, puzzle |
Developer(s) | TERC and Brøderbund (1996) The Learning Company (2001-2) TERC, FableVision, and Learning Games Network (2015+) |
Publisher(s) | Brøderbund (1996) The Learning Company (2001-2) TERC (2015+) |
Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, OS X, iOS, Android |
First release | Logical Journey of the Zoombinis March 1996 |
Latest release | Zoombinis August 2015 |
Zoombinis is a series of educationalpuzzle computer games that were originally developed by TERC and published by Brøderbund Software until The Learning Company bought Brøderbund in 1998 and took over developing and publishing the series in 2001. The series consists of three games: Logical Journey of the Zoombinis (1996), Zoombinis: Mountain Rescue (2001), and Zoombinis: Island Odyssey (2002). On August 6, 2015, Logical Journey was updated and re-released (as Zoombinis) for tablets and modern operating systems by TERC, FableVision, and Learning Games Network.[1][2] The series focuses on the Zoombinis, small blue creatures each with different appearances and personalities, which the player must guide through strange puzzle-filled lands.
Logical Journey of the Zoombinis (1996)[edit]
Creating Zoombinis at Zoombini Isle
Zoombini Isle, the Zoombinis' homeland, has been taken over by the evil Bloats. The Zoombinis flee but end up in a mysterious and treacherous land. Players must guide the Zoombinis through this land to reach the safety of Zoombiniville, a land of hope and prosperity for the Zoombinis. The game was made in 1995, and released in 1996.[3]
Gameplay[edit]
The player starts at Zoombini Isle, where they assemble a team of 16 Zoombinis, picking from 5 different options each in hair, eyes, nose color, and footwear, for a total of 625 possible combinations. Each combination can be used twice in the game. The player then has to do a series of minigames, helping the Zoombinis traverse through dangerous places until they reach the next location on the island. By the end of a minigame, a number of Zoombinis may be left behind. At the end of a section, the Zoombinis can rest at a campsite and be stored to join another group of Zoombinis if there are fewer than 16 Zoombinis left. From the first campsite are two branching roads that take the Zoombinis to two different areas of the island and eventually join up at the second campsite before traversing to the final section of the island. At the end of the final section lies the target destination Zoombiniville. For each group of Zoombinis that make it through a section with all 16 in their group a monument is added to Zoombiniville. The game is won when 625 Zoombinis make it to Zoombiniville.
Zoombinis Mountain Rescue (2001)[edit]
After the foundation of Zoombiniville, the Zoombinis find peace once more, until a small group of them get trapped inside a cave seeking shelter from a storm. They meet up with strange creatures called Boolies who occupy a city known as Booliewood. As a result of the storm, the Boolies have been scattered across the land, and their mayor, the Grand Boolie Boolie, has disappeared. The goal of the game is to rescue a total of 400 Boolies and bring them to Booliewood to return the Grand Boolie Boolie.
Gameplay[edit]
The player begins in Zoombiniville, where they assemble a team of 16 Zoombinis. Like the previous game, the player has to get as many of the 16 Zoombinis through the minigames as possible, by making use of the Zoombinis' different characteristics in accordance to the patterns and principles of the minigames. Some of the minigames however require only the player's logic, regardless of the Zoombinis' characteristics. How to matlab for free on mac. After all minigames are completed on a part of the land, the player progresses to play more minigames on the next part of the land. The gameplay takes more of an adventure game approach, as the number of Zoombinis on a part of the journey differ throughout different parts of the game after each checkpoint between Zoombiniville and Booliewood. The checkpoints are where Zoombinis that do not make it through minigames return to. The player also has the option to send the Zoombinis on different routes from checkpoints across the land to complete different minigames.
Zoombinis Island Odyssey (2002)[edit]
Long after the take over of Zoombini Isle at the hands of the Bloats, the island was completely stripped of its food and plant life, leaving the Zerbles and native moths hungry and forcing the Bloats to evacuate. A seagull informs the Zoombinis, who live in Zoombiniville. After an expedition of Zoombinis survey the damage on the island, they decide to bring caterpillars to restore balance to the island's chain of life.
Gameplay[edit]
The player begins by creating a group of 12 Zoombinis, which can be customized. The player must then complete different puzzles, such as growing berries and breeding moths, to eventually restore the ecosystem of the island. This game incorporates science concepts as well as math concepts into the puzzles, including intersection of rates, cryptography, astronomical time, Venn diagrams, and Punnett squares, as well as some reincarnations of puzzles from Logical Journey. The graphics have again received an update. The Zoombinis are fully 3-D, but their features no longer affect gameplay. When the Zoombinis release 224 Zerbles into the wild, the game is won.
Educational effects[edit]
As a computer game, Zoombinis is an entertaining activity for students from elementary to middle school. However, as an educational tool, Zoombinis stands above many other mathematical, analytical, and logical educational methods. The game works with problem solving through mathematics, deduction, and hypothesis testing primarily by clearly stating the goal of the problem at hand, with the option to either deduce for one's self or learn from with gameplay strategies for success.[4]
Mathematical aspects[edit]
The different games a player encounters when trying to get the Zoombinis from Zoombini Isle to Zoombiniville represent many mathematical characteristics. 'Pizza Pass', 'Allergic Cliffs', and 'Stone Cold Caves' exercise the sorting, grouping, and comparing of information. Free bollywood hit songs. 'Captain Cajun's Ferryboat', 'Stone Rise', and 'Titanic Tattooed Toads' reinforce ordering, linking information, and problem solving. 'Fleens!', 'Mudball Wall', and 'Hotel Dimensia' emphasize graphing and mapping, while 'Lions' Lair', 'Mirror Machine', and 'Bubblewonder Abyss' train the player in sorting, organizing, and algebraic thinking.[5]
Zoombinis Logical Journey Free Download Mac
Deductive reasoning[edit]
Sub-games such as 'Allergic Cliffs' and 'Stone Cold Caves' require the player to find patterns and arrangements of the Zoombinis in order to pass the obstacle. Each game also has a select number of attempts which may be failures before a Zoombini is taken back to the beginning of the game at Zoombini Isle, giving an incentive for the player to think critically and not randomly guess answers. As a result, these games enable players' deductive skills while also enforcing strategic efficiency.[5]
Hypothesis testing[edit]
Players also encounter critical thinking with testing and observing different logical outcomes in 'Pizza Pass' and 'Mudball Wall'. By examining the varying characteristics of toppings on a pizza and the number and color of dots on a wall, the player can experiment with the correct patterns to get the Zoombinis to the next level. Similarly, with the deductive reasoning sub-games, these exercises discourage random guessing by giving only a few options to fail before losing a Zoombini.[5] However, with the games that involve more hypothesis testing, the incorrect guesses remain on the screen in a categorized pile so that the player might learn from previous attempts to come to the correct conclusion.
Game effectiveness with students[edit]
Zoombinis Wiki
With the game's release in the Spring of 1996, through its continued use in the present, observations of the game have shown it to be efficient and useful for students and teachers alike. As a learning tool, the game is fun and interactive for children born into the continuously evolving technological era of 2016. The characters are generalized, but still have a cartoonish look to entice any young person who wants to learn, and the format of the game inspires group work. The communication created between two or more players talking about how to find the right kind of pizza or nose, eyes, and hair matching Zoombini is a simple and effective way that students have fun learning with the game.[6]
Zoombinis Logical Journey Demo
Awards[edit]
Year | Nominee / work | Award | Result |
---|---|---|---|
2003 | Zoombinis Island Odyssey | Bologna New Media Award | Won[7] |
Zoombinis Logical Journey Free Mac Full
References[edit]
- ^Takahashi, Dean (2015-02-17). 'Nonprofit brings back Zoombinis educational game and launches Kickstarter'. VentureBeat. Retrieved 2016-04-16.
- ^Shao, Yiqing (2015-02-18). 'Zoombinis App to Be Released for Tablets and Desktop'. Boston magazine. Retrieved 2016-04-16.
- ^'Logical Journey of the Zoombinis.(Broderbund)(The Learning Arcade) (Software Review)(Brief Article)(Evaluation)'. Computer Shopper (subscription required). Archived from the original on 2014-06-29 – via HighBeam Research.
- ^MURRAY, MEGAN; MOKROS, JAN; RUBIN, ANDEE (1999-01-01). 'Mathematically Rich, Equitable Game Software'. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School. 5 (3): 180–186. JSTOR41180770.
- ^ abcMoss, Thomas P. (2004-01-01). Playful thoughts: A study of the effects of 'Logical Journey of the Zoombinis' on elementary students' mathematical attitudes and reasoning skills (Ed.D. thesis). United States -- New York: Teachers College, Columbia University. ProQuest305209226.
- ^Rubin, Andee et al. What Kind Of Educational Computer Games Would Girls Like?. 1st ed. Massachusetts: TERC, 1997. Web. 16 Nov. 2016.
- ^'Mathematics - Zoombinis'(PDF). Sunburst. 2008: 30. Retrieved November 22, 2017.Cite journal requires
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(help)
External links[edit]
- Zoombinis series at MobyGames
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