ThinkFun Robot Turtles Game

This is a fun little game to teach young ones very beginning and simple logic. Their goal is essentially to create a set of instructions (think: "go straight, then turn left, then use your laser to melt some ice") that you the adult enact, acting sort of as their computer.It can scale well to different age and maturity levels by changing what obstacles are on the game board and changing the layout. We haven't gone through all of the available options as my son isn't that advanced yet, but i see this having legs for a couple years (4 to 6) and maybe longer.

I initially read about this game on NPR's All Tech Considered Weekly Innovations Blog and I was extremely excited about the game concept and signed up on the creator's website for updates. When he announced that he would be selling through Amazon, I quickly jumped on the chance to get a copy. When it arrived I was a little disappointed, I expected cool bells and whistles, but instead the game appeared simplistic and I thought it would be boring. I WAS WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! My son (aged 4) LOVES this game which should be enough in itself (SERIOUSLY, how often do you see an extremely hyper, goofy boy want to sit still for hours on end to play a game) but when a programmer friend came by and watched my son play it and explained to me the importance of what that "simplistic" game was teaching I was hooked....This game is not only a great educational tool for all of the future evil geniuses, but it is fun and offers mothers everywhere a bit of stationary fun.....

I got this game for the kids this Christmas. In short my 6 year old boy loves it. My 10-year-old is probably beyond it, but we haven't played the advanced aspects yet. I tried this out with an early 3-year-old and she really didn't get it. A 4-year-old boy did grasp but wasn't terribly interested. Small samples, but there you go. When you watch the marketing for this it makes it sound like every kid will love it - not the case.In terms of the game's extendability (because we're all IT people here right?) it's definitely there. You start super-easy and almost boring (this is how my 10-year-old lost interest I think) and then you add the wrinkles/challenges (game calls them unlocks, which kids understand!). The best unlock I think is the challenge of writing your instructions out completely, and then running the program, seeing if you get it right first time, and then debugging and rerunning the program. That was the first time it REALLY felt like we're learning programming.We haven't gotten to function frog yet - all the kids think it means the frog jumps over the obstacles, but the reality is much more interesting. You use the frog to call a function that runs that bit of code. The only challenge will be developing a map that lends itself to repeated sequence of actions (i.e. fire laser, move forward several times). I would think the instruction book could include some game designs that can handle that.One other gripe related to the last comment - the first thing the instruction book says in the game is: "don't read this instruction book, go online." OH COME ON! If I wanted to read directions online I wouldn't have shelled out $40 for a board game when I could have bought 10 programming apps for their iPad for the same money. The least you can do is respect my decision and support it. Board games have written directions that work. Nuff said.But all in all, great game, should be in every elementary school classroom. I look forward to playing this with my mini-me this week.

super awesome !!! both my kids, ages 10 and 14 absolutely loved playing this, it may be the most fun i've ever had with a board game - totally customizable, each of us took turns creating mazes for the other players

We played this game the first time with 5 people - 3 adults, one 4 year old, and a two year old in the lap of an adult. My grandsons loved the choice between "turn right" "turn left" or "go straight" and the adults intentionally made "mistakes" so they could hit the bug and yell "Bug! Bug! I changed my mind!" I love that kids can take risks and make mistakes without penalty as part of the learning process. This was also reinforcing their knowledge of right/left/straight, turn-taking, and working by steps to reach a goal. We did not include any obstacles in the first go-round, so the game was very simplistic, but with supervision, more complex concepts can be introduced to further teach pre-coding skills. The kids enjoyed the use of turtle noises when the turtles were being moved, and the adults had a blast doing the turtle dance to entertain the kids when we finally reached our jewel at the center. Anecdotally, the boys wanted to play this game so much that they gathered all the pillows in the house (about a dozen) and stacked them up beside the game cabinet, then climbed up and got the game! We were amazed that they came up with this plan and successfully executed it too!

This is an Ok game and the intent was good. It did demonstrate the basics of programming but it was limited. My daughter figured it out after one round and started to add her own rules. She changed the nature of the cards to make it a little more interesting. For example, hiding the "bug" card under an obstacle so you discover a "bug". Otherwise, the "bug" card has no reason for being if you can just say, "bug" when you want change a card. We were disappointed there were no actual "Robot Turtle" characters. A good game does not need a toy component yet, It should not imply it has 3-dimensional elements. The illustration on the back of the box, near the description of contents, shows four individual turtle characters. This is not the case. The quality of the board game construction and cards were good. My daughter did enjoy it even more as she used her creativity to come up with rules.