Critique #1 — Reading Blaster Ages 9–12

11 min readFeb 4, 2019

Hey everyone! In these series of posts, I will be critiquing educational video games as part of the requirement for Carnegie Mellon’s course on designing Educational Games. All of the games will be critiqued on a variety of factors following a standard template.

Overview and Description

Reading Blaster Ages 9–12 was one of the most popular reading games in the early 2000’s and is a part of the franchise of Blaster Learning System, a widely popular Educational Video Game franchise in the 90's.
Originally known for it’s critically acclaimed series on teaching mathematics, the series quickly expanded towards other subjects such as language arts(reading) and science.

The game starts off in the fictional city of Bizarroville where six of the most leading townsmen have disappeared after visiting Dr Dabble’s spooky mansion. The protagonist, Rave is motivated by the fact that his star idol, Gloria Ghastley is one of those people and decides to visit Dr Dabble’s spooky mansion.

The player who is playing from Rave’s perspective has to collect evidence throughout the house by solving through booby traps set up throughout the house. The game starts off with Rave’s perspective where he maintains all the evidence and logs in a device that also helps us navigate throughout the house. Rave finds evidence for 2 individuals through each iteration and has to ascertain which evidence is relevant to the guest he chooses to save in that moment.

These booby traps are actually Mini English Games with different pre-requisite skills that need to be solved through in order to collect evidence.

Word Carnival : In this turn based game, the player has to finish forming their sentence before Lydia, the helping Ghost does. The game ends when either the player or the computer finish a sentence. Evidence is released if the player wins the round.

Skills mastered : Sentence structure, parts of speech, grammar.

2. RSVP Order: In this single player game, the player has to place the invitations in the right order after reading through the passage below. The game ends when the player places all 4 invitations in the cards. Evidence is released if the player finds the right order.

Skills mastered : Reading for detail, sequencing and ordering, drawing conclusions

3. Word Catacomb : The player finds himself trapped in a Catacomb for words. The player must solve through the catacomb by jumping ghosts bearing words most relevant to the prompt. Evidence is released if the player solves through 3 catacombs.

Skills mastered: Synonyms and antonyms, definitions

4. Fortune Cookie Inspiration : In this game, the player must choose which fortune cookie inspired our guest to take this action. The game ends if the player clicks on a fortune cookie. Evidence is released if the player finds the most relevant fortune cookie.

Skills mastered : Reading for detail, using context clues

5. Sentence Graveyard : In this game, the player has to click over tombs inscribed with a word. If the word is not the right word in the given order of the sentence, the tomb will recede. The game ends when the player gets the right sentence or the player decides to quit this game. Evidence is released if the player forms the sentence.

Skills mastered : Sentence structure, parts of speech, grammar

6. Word Ladder : The objective of this game is to form a word ladder using words that are related to each other. The game ends when a ladder is successfully formed or when the player chooses to quit. Evidence is released when the player forms the ladder properly.

Skills mastered : Synonyms, Definitions, Sequencing and Ordering

Honorary Mention:

(Not a game, but an important mechanic leading up to the 7th game)

FINDING CLUES : The clues point towards which pieces of evidence are relevant to the guest. Users must hover over the text and clean it up using a tool. Not technically a game, but is an important mechanic for the final game.

7. Reassemble the guest : All the evidence found leads up to this game. After solving through the Word Ladder, you have access to Dr Dabble’s labratory where you have to interact with the machine that Dr Dabble used to make the guests disappear.

Using the clues you found previously, you have to distinguish which of the evidence you found belongs to the relevant guest. The evidence must be placed in the order of the clues. The machine frees the guest if the player chooses the right permutation of evidence. Dr Dabble wakes up and kicks you out of the laboratory if you get it wrong.

Skills mastered : Using context clues, sequencing

Learning Objectives

Target Audience

As the title suggests, the game is intended for the demongraphics of ages 9–12 with the given assumptions about their reading comprehension for that age bracket. However, based on my personal opinion, I feel that players above that age bracket (up to 14) could actually benefit from the more advanced stages of this game.

Prior Knowledge

At the back of the game, it claims to teach all of the following skills for English

Parts of speech
Sentence Structure
Grammar
Definitions
Synonyms and antonyms
Reading for detail
Drawing conclusions
Using context clues
Sequencing and ordering

However, I would argue that all of this is actually the prior knowledge players need to understand in order to play this game. However, the game provides very little in the way of instruction. The purpose of this game becomes more apparent as you play through the game as well as review the Educational standards specified for this game. You’ll realize that it’s actually intended towards facilitating extensive practice for all of these components towards mastery and the claim of teaching these skills is a case of “shoddy 90’s marketing”.

In addition, the student will need

· A functional mouse
· A functional keyboard
· Visual skills to perceive space and time
· A computer with the relevant specifications
· A functional speaker to understand feedback

What students will learn from this game

As mentioned earlier, this game has very little in the way of instruction and it’s core intention seems to be aligned with mastery of all the skills listed above. As such, students are expected to master the following skills through the use of this game :

Parts of speech : Learn about the parts of speech and make associations of words with their respective parts of speech.
Sentence Structure : Learn the correct order of parts of speech to form a sentence.
Grammar : Learn the proper word formation(tenses) in conjunction with
Definitions : Learn the common meaning of words that students are expected to come across in their readings
Synonyms and antonyms : Cement the difference between words that are alike and opposite to each other.
Reading for detail : Extract the most relevant detail by reading through a passage.
Drawing conclusions : Using context clues and reading for detail, draw appropriate conclusions for the context specified.
Using context clues : Draw specific conclusions from the clues found
Sequencing and ordering : Form sequences and orders of prospective components based on the contextual information provided.

Transfer

The aim of all learning is transfer to real world situations. All of the skills listed in the game are critical components towards effective communication in English, especially given that the language relies on a lot of sub-context to facilitate conversations.

Unfortunately, research is sparse on the effects of this game. Based on anecdotal evidence on my and critical self analysis, I would argue that the game has transferable merit on the following skills.

Parts of speech
Sentence Structure
Grammar
Definitions
Synonyms and antonyms
Sequencing and ordering

However, it does a shoddy job at facilitating real world transfer for these skills

Reading for detail
Drawing conclusions
Using context clues

This is mostly because of the nature in which they are taught, which will be discussed further in Mechanics, Dynamics and Action.

Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics (MDA)

The MDA framework is a common framework used to evaluate games.

Each component of the MDA framework will be discussed in two levels, one for the educational mini games and for the overall game itself.

Mechanics :
The objective of each game was described above in the overview.

With the exception of Word Catacombs, all mini games in this game are turn based. For each of these games, the objective is highlighted explicitly and implicitly at the center of the screen. Turn based games use the mouse pointer either
1. To explicitly perform an action to signal turns,
2. To implicitly do it through the use of an event.

Overall experience for each game ranged between clunky and good.

For the mechanics of the game itself, I personally liked the touch on making clue searching intentionally clunky to emulate the real life difficulty of the task. Aside from that, the game has fairly standard mechanics associated with detective games, ranging from an inventory collector to a map of the entire mansion.

Dynamics :

Each event is signaled as complete through the use of distinct caricature sounds and in some cases, distinct visual feedback depending on the game. For instance in Word Carnival, the turn ends with a bell ringing if it’s right. The sound effect ends with a whistle piping down if it’s incorrect or the player is dealt with a bad power up. Visual feedback was provided in some games, but not all. Competition was facilitated between the user and computer in only one game. The experience of having fun was binary, ranging from yes to no.

Only one game out of the seven (Word Catacomb)featured any instruction regarding the mechanics of the game. None of the games featured explicit guides for the respective skills

For the game itself, Rave teams up with a mysterious ghost named Lydia who guides him towards clues. The game has fairly simple visual and auditory cues for successful collection of evidence where Rave jumps in the air when he gets evidence and shakes his head when he doesn’t. The guest trapped motivates Rave to try again when he fails at any particular task.

Aesthetics :

While the mechanics and dynamics varied significantly, the game has a unifying feel when it comes to it’s setting of Fantasy. All the games had a similar element of spookiness present ubiquitously throughout the game. The game also hits the nail on the head in terms of sensations. The color scheme, distress cues and the depictions are perfectly appropriate for the age bracket targeted. Both the visual and auditory cues aid tremendously in this aspect.

Rescuing two guests causes a significant increase in the difficulty of all mini games as well as deciphering the evidence needed to release each guest, thus providing a component of challenge as well as discovery. This also aids in fading, which will be discussed later.

The game has it’s lapses but is otherwise a fairly engaging game, and thus does a great job at making the players submit to playing more of it.

Learning Principles

This game employs certain learning principles. I’ll describe the ones that it did impart effectively and certain principles that would explicitly benefit this game.

Fading : This game does an excellent job at fading the tasks associated with each game and the overall objective of the game. Each time two guests are released, the difficulty of the game rises significantly.

Segmenting : One of the positive aspects about having 7 mini games is that you can choose as a player the game you want to participate in.

Participation: This game does an excellent job at ensuring that the students participate in each game to maximize their chances of rescuing a guest.

Things I wished it did well :

Scaffolding: This is my biggest qualm with this game by far. Unless a student is already familiar with the skills required to go through the game or is willing to go through a frustrating cycle of trying and failing, the game provides very little in terms of actual instruction for the skill required itself.

Feedback : I wish this game did a better job at providing feedback in the mini games. The feedback is represented arbitrarily and there was no common feedback for successful completion of a task.

Miscellaneous Details

The game also features Lydia’s backstory as a hidden feature. Requiring completion of tasks far beyond what is deemed necessary, it reveals a surprisingly dark backstory for Lydia. This element caught me by surprise when I first played it in grade 7. As I replayed this game, I realized that it was surprisingly dark for a kid’s game.

Overall Verdict

It wasn’t by accident that I chose this game. I played this on countless occasions when I was younger. My scores in English tests dramatically improved after playing this game. While it was not a perfect game by far, I enjoyed a lot about it nonetheless and remember it very fondly to this day.

However, the game has a lot of flaws to be classified as a good educational game. It does not provide any help to students in terms of actually learning the skill apart from binary feedback. The game feels lacking in terms of both mechanics and dynamics for various games. The game missed out on several vital instructional pieces that it could have incorporated or done better.

While the incorporation of mystery into a word game is very novel, it could have benefited from a bit more time on development for it’s under-cooked elements.

Overall rating : 2.5/5 stars