We're so grateful to everyone who has contributed to our campaign, shared the Kickstarter, and helped make the remake of Zoombinis a success! Since we have already blown through our initial goal and have enough time left, we wanted to see if we could stretch to reach an even higher goal.
Are you ready for it?
If we can raise an additional $80,000, we'll be able to finalize development on an enhanced Zoombiniville (or Zoombiniton for some of our international friends) and some fun extras to be peppered throughout the game. Many of you will remember Zoombiniville and the role it plays as you guide our little blue friends away from danger, but for those of you who don't remember or haven't yet had a chance to play, allow us to offer up an explanation.
Zoombiniville is, of course, the ultimate end-goal for all Zoombinis, and you, as their guide, will be helping each and every one of them make the trip safely. But Zoombiniville is more than just the end of the game: it's also where your Zoombinis make their new home, save their progress, and celebrate your success.
We would like to enhance Zoombiniville to create a more rewarding experience as each pack of Zoombinis arrive and add a few extras to unlock, as well as improve the grand finale! Help us reach this goal by sharing our Kickstarter with your friends and family. Thank you for your support!
Zoombinis is a classic, beloved, and award-winning puzzle game created by TERC (that’s us) and Broderbund in the late 90s. Back then, the little blue Zoombinis enjoyed the good life. They lived happily on players’ computers, entertaining and enriching gamers’ lives with challenges of logic, learning, and adventure. But over time they languished, passed over by a lack of updates, a changing market, and the coming of touchscreens. For years, fans have asked us to make Zoombinis available to a new generation of players, young and old.
Having now re-acquired the rights, we need you, trusted guide, to help them return, on a range of modern devices and with updated artwork, but still true to the spirit, gameplay, and challenges of the original. You will help expand our platforms, add new content, and bring Zoombinis back for everyone!
Free the Zoombinis! Make your pledge, begin the adventure, sharpen your logic, and collect strange and unique tokens of their journey as your reward!
As their guide, players create and lead Zoombinis with varying characteristics of hair, eyes, noses, and feet, in groups of 16, through sets of challenges, working to get them to the promised land of Zoombiniville. The challenges increase in difficulty as more packs make their way through. Depending on players’ skill levels, a few Zoombinis may be stopped along the way, but they can always go back for them later! The game features wonderful artwork and music, funny and endearing characters, and subtle building of the player’s math and logic skills along the way. Challenges include the Allergic Cliffs, Stone Cold Caves, Pizza Pass, Captain Cajun’s Ferryboat, Titanic Tattooed Toads, Stone Rise, Fleens, Hotel Dimensia, Mudball Wall, The Lion’s Lair, Mirror Machine, and Bubblewonder Abyss.
While the new adaptation is immediately recognizable as Zoombinis, we are updating the graphics for modern devices. The original art was just not scalable. All our characters were pixel-based sprites, and the background art was a fixed resolution. We’re working with super-talented artist Chris Cyr (creator of http://plaidcats.com/) to redo all the backgrounds. Original creator Scot Osterweil has gone back to the original Zoombinis look, and we're recreating all the characters the Zoombinis interact with by tracing over their animations from the original but in vector form. The game will look amazing and work with tons of different devices and screen resolutions. Here is a first look at some of our favorite characters – enhanced!
Dev Diary - Zoombinis character redesign
Bob Flynn, Director of Art and Animation from FableVision studios, discussing the Zoombinis character redesign:
Our favorite Pizza Trolls – Arno, Willa, and Shyler. We even have some new toppings in the works – pineapple and jalapeño anyone?
As the Zoombinis travel on their epic journey, they encounter rich and enchanting game environments. We are updating all of the art for modern devices, and the world will be more immersive than ever.
Music and Sound Snippets
Zoombinis has a great, original soundtrack. Check out these tracks:
Zoombinis Theme
Intro to Stone Cold Caves
Legend of the Fleens
Each of the 12 challenges features a unique logic puzzle, and each puzzle comes in four levels of increasing difficulty, as more and more packs of Zoombinis progress. The players are kept challenged – and learning.
For example, in Pizza Pass, players must make an increasing number of trolls their favorite kind of pizza based on clues such as “More toppings!” or “Ewwww, yuck!”. Each time Zoombinis come through, Arno and his pals will want something different! Be thoughtful or some Zoombinis may be tossed back to Zoombini Isle! Check out the footage of a newly updated—though not yet final—Pizza Pass level:
$50,000 – To make the Zoombinis game we want to make, we need your help. We’re already working hard to bring the game to tablets this summer, and this initial goal will help us make the new Zoombinis the best it can be on a variety of platforms, stay true to the original, and really polish the game. In particular, we want to increase the range of devices we support beyond the iPad and Android tablets to include PC, Mac, and tablets of all sizes. To accomplish all this we need to deal with some assets from the old game that are either missing or aren't in the shape they need to be, perform additional QA and testing, and help ensure we offer a great experience for the players.
Any funds raised beyond the goal will go directly toward improving and expanding the Zoombinis experience.
TERC is a not-for-profit in Cambridge, MA, where the Zoombinis were originally created and whose work is centered on K-12 math and science education. Our lead developer is FableVision Studios, a Boston-based educational software firm with a wide portfolio of games, animation, and interactives and whose clients include PBSKids, National Geographic, The Jim Henson Company, and the Smithsonian Institution. Also on the project is Learning Games Network, featuring Scot Osterweil, one of the original developers of Zoombinis.
$5.00 - Just the Toppings
$10 - Tablet with Toppings
$15 - Desktop with Toppings
$25 - Come On, More Stuff!
$50 - The Perfect (Digital) Pizza
$60 - Character Creator Pack
$110 - Shelter Rock Zoombinis Collector's Pack
$110 - Shelter Rock Zoombinis Collector's Pack + Early Access Demo (Limit 100 quantity)
$175 - Shade Tree Zoombinis Collector's Pack
$250 - Zoombiniville Deluxe Collector's Pack
$500 - Innskeeper's Philanthropic Pack
$500 - Lion's Level Pack (Limit 12 quantity)
$1000 - New Zoombiniville Founder's Level Backer
$2000 - Nostalgia Level Backer (Limit 1 quantity)
$2000 - Nostalgia Level Backer (Limit 1 quantity)
It’s an Educational Game?
Yes, a very good award-winning one, but Zoombinis is first and foremost a fun and engaging game. Many educational games focus on teaching, with the game as an afterthought. For Zoombinis, the creators worked hard to find the fun inherent in the logic and math concepts that children and adults find compelling every day, such as looking for patterns, organizing information, reasoning about evidence, and systematic testing – aspects of many good, thoughtful games!
Schedule
iOS and Android versions version 1.0 are planned for Summer 2015, and will be available worldwide in English and Spanish.
To make the Zoombinis game we want to make, we need your help. We’re already working hard to bring the game to tablets this summer, and this initial goal will help us make the new Zoombinis the best it can be on a variety of platforms, stay true to the original, and really polish the game. In particular, we want to increase the range of devices we support beyond the iPad and Android tablets to include PC, Mac, and tablets of all sizes. To accomplish all this we need to deal with some assets from the old game that are either missing or aren't in the shape they need to be, perform additional QA and testing, and help ensure we offer a great experience for the players.
Any funds raised beyond the goal will go directly toward improving and expanding the Zoombinis experience.
PRESS KIT
Risks and challenges
Logical Journey of the Zoombinis (just “Zoombinis” in its new version) was a well-established game that sold hundreds of thousands of copies, won numerous awards, and is considered one of the best examples of a game that was first and foremost fun to play while also being educational – so we know precisely what we’re developing. We are well into the development process for the iPad version and are on time and on budget for a planned late June release. Our platform is Unity, which allows for builds to the range of platforms we’ve outlined in this Kickstarter. Our costs are for improvements to artwork, QA and testing, adaptation to the quirks of each platform, etc. In other words, the risks are fairly minimal.
There are some challenges, though. We want this game to be spot-on for new technology and devices, and because of the outdated tech that was used to build Zoombinis, we’re basically having to re-develop it. It’s not just a port of the old game, which is, of course, great news! However, because we want to remain true to the original title and we don’t want things to wind up on the cutting room floor, this is a fairly expensive and extensive project. The biggest challenge we face is satisfying both nostalgic and brand new fans.
And, of course, getting Arno’s pizza right. But that’s a challenge we’re used to by now.
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Funding period
- (35 days)