Children's Games ?

[zami]

Does anyone have suggestions for children's games?

OpenSource or otherwise, $ free or otherwise. So long as it's fun and for a small child (5). Unlike games for older kids and adults (aka much older kids) it's HARD to find reviews or recommendations for small children's software!

I'm looking for something that's an actual game, not "math and phonics made fun!".

Right now my son plays-
Frozen Bubble
Monkey Bubble
TuxPaint (not really a game)
Zuma

And I let him walk around in WoW with me (we ride boats and airships from city to city, burn all my money on griffin rides, annoy the NPCs, etc. No combat, no annoying other players.)

I think he would love a game that he can play by himself with an avatar walking around. Or something music and sound based (like the music maker in the old Mario Paint game).

Finding children's games is always unpleasant so I would be very appreciative of any suggestions. Thanks!

-zami

[matthewcraig]

Sure, there are several great kids games for your Ubuntu system. Take a look at this catalog (http://www.linuxgamingworld.com/games-catalog) for titles by My Game Company and Grubby Games.

For communities, you'll be looking at the Web-based Flash content games. Club Penguin (nicely named for Linux users ;) is an extremely popular one. Finding online content for kids is tricky, of course, because of the player moderation required.

[zami]

Thank you so much!

Linux native children's games.... aaaaahh. I think we are going to try out FizzBall from Grubby Games.

We downloaded the trial of Insaniqaurium from PopCap yesterday, and my son LOVED it. We both loved it. Enough that I shelled out $20 for the full game - the demo ran well through Wine, so what could go wrong hmm? Well it wont connect to the PopCap server with the registration number for some reason unknown to me. Needless to say my boy is disappointed!

FizzBall to the rescue. :D

I'm going to check out ClubPenguin later on my own as well. Thanks again for the suggestions!

-zami

[rizzeh]

World of Goo - native linux, polished, funky and stresses the gray matter :)


http://2dboy.com/games.php

[compiledkernel]

http://gaming.gwos.org/doku.php/games:children_games

http://gaming.gwos.org/doku.php/games:education

[wolfyking2]

I dont know, runescape maybe? If your son is into that stuff, you know :)

1+ to world of goo, that game is so incredibly amazing...and it has it's own linux client :)

[Krazy Penguin]

I have less ideas on games but i like Club Penguin and it runs easily on Flash.

[donkyhotay]

There is also gcompris which is more of an educational suite but definitely geared to the younger generation. Thats available in the repos.


//edit: didn't read the original post closely enough. gcompris is more of a 'math and phonics is fun'.

[KIAaze]

Actually, I would say almost all GNU/Linux games, except FPS and RTS games (+ some like Penumbra, Lugaru or Jump'n'bump), are child-friendly.

Just a few (not sure about which are appropriate for 5 year olds however... ^^'):
-Balazar Brothers
-Fish fillets NG (http://fillets.sourceforge.net/)
-World of Goo
-Mystic mine
-Liquid war
-All kinds of logic games like http://www.anakreon.cz/en/Berusky.htm or http://xye.sourceforge.net/
-platformers: supertux, secret maryo chronicles, dirk dashing (this one might be considered violent)
-Slune (Contained some bad words I think. Not sure.Just checked and nothing worse than "bande d'aliens dégénérés !" (degenerate aliens)/"slimy alien", where aliens here refers to extraterrestrials, not foreigners. ;).)
-Neverball
- http://xmoto.tuxfamily.org/

I haven't played/finished all of those, but from what I saw, I can't think of anything inappropriate in them.

[MaximB]

World Of Goo is NOT a children game, while the graphics might look like it is, it's a very challenging "puzzle" game on the later levels.
It is without a doubt an original and good game - but not for young kids.

If you want more games for kids check :
http://www.mygamecompany.com/Products/linux.htm

[Bölvaður]

info on the best game for children ever

Ri-Li : a toy railroad simulation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75QjI6URj6I

[lykwydchykyn]

World Of Goo is NOT a children game, while the graphics might look like it is, it's a very challenging "puzzle" game on the later levels.
It is without a doubt an original and good game - but not for young kids.

Someone should have told my seven year old son that before he finished all the levels without any help. darn!

supertux, fish fillets, Phun, numpty physics, atomic tanks, and (believe it or not) freecol are the current hits with my boys (7 & 5).

Others that they play now and then are "alex the alligator", neverball, technoballz, snowballz, supertuxkart, and extreme tux racer.

That's just the non-educational ones.

[Artificial Intelligence]

Grubby Games (http://grubbygames.com/) got games for kids as well.

[MaximB]

Someone should have told my seven year old son that before he finished all the levels without any help. darn!

supertux, fish fillets, Phun, numpty physics, atomic tanks, and (believe it or not) freecol are the current hits with my boys (7 & 5).

Others that they play now and then are "alex the alligator", neverball, technoballz, snowballz, supertuxkart, and extreme tux racer.

That's just the non-educational ones.

Smart kid.
They grow faster those days ... don't they ? ;)

[569874123]

Zuma


Well Zaz is somewhat similar to Zuma. It is available on playdeb.

[vexorian]

World Of Goo is NOT a children game, while the graphics might look like it is, it's a very challenging "puzzle" game on the later levels.
It is without a doubt an original and good game - but not for young kids.

If you want more games for kids check :
http://www.mygamecompany.com/Products/linux.htm
There are kids and kids. Some would love a good puzzle, it is worth the try.

In that regards, I saw Xye mentioned, I do not think it is very kid friendly right now, even though I did make a lot of improvements, a kid could in theory survive the tutorials, but the levels themselves would get crazy for most kids... I always planned to make a level set that's good for children (most really need the levels to be short, they could do with difficult but not with long) even then I think it would need someone to help the kid with it.

I did not see Pingus mentioned in this thread, it is on the repos and it is a very good lemmings port, in fact since it has a level editor, it probably defeated the original. The graphics are nice, the sound is cute, a kid would love it.

[Arthur_D]

Someone should have told my seven year old son that before he finished all the levels without any help. darn!

supertux, fish fillets, Phun, numpty physics, atomic tanks, and (believe it or not) freecol are the current hits with my boys (7 & 5).

Others that they play now and then are "alex the alligator", neverball, technoballz, snowballz, supertuxkart, and extreme tux racer.

That's just the non-educational ones.
The differences between 5 and 7 year old kids can be huge.

+1 for Pingus.

[lykwydchykyn]

The differences between 5 and 7 year old kids can be huge.

+1 for Pingus.

I know, I have one of each; I was responding to a comment that World of Goo was too hard for "children", irrespective of specific age.

My five year old enjoys playing it, though he's only solved a few of the very easy levels on his own.

+2 for Pingus --forgot about that one.

[billybobby2]

Does anyone have suggestions for children's games?

Personally I like to suggest the games like Kinder Hangman (http://sharkfuel.com/kinderhangman.html) or something similiar. This online game is very interesting and educational at the same time. Also, I would like to say that my little kid always enjoys playing it and does this with a pleasure.

[Zero2Nine]

You could install dosbox (http://www.dosbox.com/), runs fine in Ubuntu here. Many old funny Children's games are to be found on the net. Here are some titles I enjoyed when I was younger. Some of them may be a little too difficult for a 5 year old though:

- Commander Keen
- Prehistorik
- Bubble & Bobble
- Trolls
- Ducktales
- The Incredible Machine (TIM)

These are more 'childish' and educational:
- Mother Goose
- Mickey's 123
- Donald's alphabet chase

I don't know if it's legal to supply downloadlinks as most of these are still copyright protected I guess. so here are some sites to get DOS-games:
http://www.abandonia.com/
http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/

[bleutyler]

I have a 3 year old son.

There is a game he used to get familiar with the mouse. I got it from the Ubuntu repository.

pysycache.org


Also, my wife bought for him games from the comfy company. The games for very young kids have a special keybord to play with. What I really liked about these games however, was the MANY different languages, so he could play the games in dutch and learn some dutch words too.


http://www.comfyland.com/