How the game is made.

We thought that we should take a moment to let you know what exactly makes our game educational.

There are a lot of games that are meant for little children and no doubt that they have a lot of qood qualities. But we wanted to be sure that our game is really useful.

So for us, the process of game development looks something like this:

• First, we have an idea about what should be the focus of the game and for witch age group it is meant. Our game designers have a long discussion with educational scientists from two universities and we discuss how the certain age group should be approached. This idea is then written into a technical document for which our artists add the first sketches of objects and art.
• Then the game development starts. We have the designs and models made at the same time as the code is being written. Most of our IT work is done over sessions we call GameJams. These are usually a 3 day events over weekends where everyone gets together, works and help each other. This is needed as a lot of us has a day-job and we're developing Tinkido on our free time.
• Whenever we finish a new part of the game or some new features we are going back to the scientists. They give us their notes and then the developers make improvments. This phase is usually repeated a lot. Just to make sure that everything works and children really learn something from the game (and this is also the reason why it's very hard for us to predict, how long game development is going to take. We decided early that we would rather fail the deadline then fail the children)
• And when everything seems fine to the scientists and developers, the game is tested by scientists on children from different kindergardens.
• When this is done, we'll add the features to the free alpha build on our webpage.

So, this is it. I hope this helps you understand our mechanics a little better. Of course, it's not quite that easy, but we have a lot of fun doing it.

It is also important to understand, that if the  game is finished and public, we are still going to improve and add features (on the same method as described above) for as long as we have good ideas.

Concept art: Waterworld

Today we'll show you some upgraded artwork from our first game and the waterworld it features


Hope you like them:)

Progress update: February

Here's a little update on what we've been doing lately:

First of all, we have finally translated our homepage to English, so you can read all about the game in here: http://www.tinkido.com/

Game development

The prototype of the game has been developed further and you can try it out here: http://e-aabits.ee/alpha/

Currently we are trying out some new activities to offer children in our game's waterworld.. Our main focus is currently on fish and moving them in our mathematical game.
In addition to the main educational games we want to develop some small and entertaining minigames. Like the Puzzle Game you can see in the demo.

We are now using the latest version of Linux (4.0.1) that, in addition to offering the latest tools, allows us to compliment the game for Linux platforms.

In February we had two GameJam weekends: a 2 day periods for brainstorming and game development. The main focus of these events was developing the Sets game and the Addition and Subtraction game.


The Team

Our lead developer Veljo Hagu (The veteran and project manager of Playtech) took over the responsibilities of technical project management from Kristjan Mustkivi. Kristjan recently had a baby of his own but he will return to the project once his family has settled into their new life.

The team has also grown. We are happy to welcome Alan Sigus and Mark Tehver (both from Playtech), Keijo Kraus (Fanchinima, 3D Tech R&D ) and Edgar Juhkov (http://www.juhkov.com/).

We'll keep you updated on our latest news so don't go anywhere!:)