The BBC have launched three children’s games for the CBeebies channel which were designed and built by the interactive TV experts, Pushbutton. The games went live in September ‘09 and can be played for free via the ‘red button’ by the UK’s ten million satellite TV households.
Based on the popular CBeebies childrens’ shows, In The Night Garden and The Green Balloon Club, the games offer visually rich interactive experiences which are both educational and fun. The third game, Tubes, is based around the popular CBeebies on-screen bugs, and allows kids to catch them in a tube.
Designed to use simple key presses of the Sky remote control, the games provide challenges for children of varying abilities and levels of development.
Tubes is simple, but addictive, and has several ‘zones’ to be completed. Aimed at very young players, it requires only the left and right arrow keys on the Sky remote control to play.
The Green Balloon Club game is a picture quiz aimed at slightly older children. The player is asked to match images to a given animal. The featured wildlife is what children might expect to find in UK towns and countryside, and will therefore be familiar to Green Balloon Club viewers. Again, a limited number of keys on the remote are needed to play the game, and the images and sound effects offer a visually rich interactive experience that is both educational and fun.
The In The Night Garden game is designed to help improve counting skills in a fun and visually rewarding way. Three separate counting tasks are offered based on popular elements and characters from the show. This provides a challenge for children of varying abilities and levels of mathematical development.
Finding and counting the ‘Pontipines’ that are hiding around the screen, making piles of ten stones to get Makka Pakka to play his trumpet, and finally counting the Tittifer birds all offer fun, animated counting challenges.
Pushbutton’s game engine has been designed to offer a personalised experience for its audience, registering if a player is giving multiple wrong answers. The game is able to deliver an easier level, offering a seamless experience, ensuring that the player can optimise their learning capabilities without becoming frustrated or disengaged.
Damian Vicary, interactive TV producer for BBC Children’s, wrote “Games are one of the most popular services for the CBeebies audience, but for a long time the games we’ve offered on the red button have felt a little bit tired and out of date.”…. “The new service brings with it brand new games for some of the most popular shows on CBeebies. Who doesn’t love ‘In the Night Garden’? Well now you can play along with Makka Pakka, Upsy Daisy and Igglepiggle whenever you want. ‘The Green Balloon Club’ opens kids’ eyes to nature. Whether they live in the countryside or the middle of town, the gameplay has been designed to get children really involved.”
Paula Byrne, managing director of Pushbutton, said, “We are delighted with the quality and playability of the games we have developed. Great kudos is due to our design and development staff. The bar has been raised significantly with these new games.”
Pushbutton worked closely with BBC commissioning staff, to ensure that the interactive games met the high standards and strong production values expected by the corporation.