Welcome back to the stream! This week on the Game Based Learning Review, we return to Zoombinis, the classic puzzle game we started last episode. To kick things off, Dan does some chicanery with his camera feed, and then we head into Hotel Dementia and Captain Cajun’s Ferryboat. We spend a good stretch of this episode on the wrong side of the game's famously steep learning curve, from engineering frog-riding paths to navigating the Bubble Wonder Abyss. That gave us room to talk about how '90s design dropped players into the deep end, and about how Zoombinis builds general problem-solving ability where contemporaries like Oregon Trail and Number Munchers focused on specific academic subjects. Also featured: fun with chatters, a few vaporized Zoombinis, and our first hard-won arrival at Zoombiniville.

Episode Outline:

• [0:00 - 4:00] Stream intro; blathering.
• [4:00 - 15:30] Hotel Dementia does not go our way, many Zoombinis are lost. Dan redeems himself on Captain Kinjun's Ferryboat by matching shared features to ferry the Zoombinis across.
• [15:30 - 25:15] We take on the giant toad lily pad puzzle and talk about the project management flavor of problem-solving this game develops compared to its classic contemporaries.
• [25:15 - 35:00] We arrive at Stone Rise. Dan painstakingly links the squad across glowing hexagons by shared traits, and gets through with some help from chat.
• [35:00 - 41:00] We enter the Lion's Lair and sniff out the solution, lining our team up by nose color to appease a giant lion.
• [41:00 - 51:30] The crystal mirror machine puzzle brings intense matching action. We reflect on the game's pacing and how it compares to the learning tools students in classrooms use today.
• [51:30 - 59:19] The Bubble Wonder Abyss finale! We vaporize a Zoombini on the way through (RIP), which leads to an interesting conversation about consequences in educational games before we finally reach Zoombiniville.

Links:

• Zoombinis: The classic '90s educational logic and puzzle game we play throughout the episode.
• Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, and Carmen Sandiego: Classic educational games we compare to Zoombinis, noting how they focused on specific academic subjects rather than general cognitive problem-solving.
• The Legend of Zelda (NES): Comes up when we discuss '90s games that threw players into the deep end and let them learn without modern tutorials.
• Logo: The classic programming turtle game, referenced while watching the Zoombinis navigate the lily pad paths like a coding sequence.
• Super Auto Pets: Brought up in reference to NorthernLion's catchphrases as Dan narrates his frantic puzzle-solving thought process.
• The Prisoner: The classic television series Dan invokes when comparing the game's giant bubbles to the show's iconic security bubble.
• Kerbal Space Program: An example of a modern learning game that still uses high-stakes consequences to keep things engaging.

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