HAKITZU: CODE OF THE WARRIOR IPAD GAME TEACHES KIDS TO CODE… WITH ROBOTS!
Steering your children down a specific career path is, for most parents, hiding to nothing. Better to let them discover what they want to be for themselves, and provide the necessary support.
And yet… How many parents in 2013 are subtly (or less so) encouraging their children to learn to code? In a world of apps and whizzy websites, the ability to program is an increasingly desirable skill.
Unsurprisingly, there are apps for that. We loved Move The Turtle last year, which aimed to teach children as young as five the basics of coding. Now it’s been joined on the App Store by something for older kids – Hakitzu: Code of the Warrior.
It’s an iPad app released by Kuato Studios that “teaches the JavaScript language through controlling mighty battle robots in a dangerous sport of the future”.
We’re sold already.
It goes on: “Use your new found coding ability to plan your moves, code your robot warriors and execute your path to victory. Learn to code or prepare to be hacked!”
The game is free to play and gets children to build their virtual robots and then battle against friends. At the time of writing, there are no in-app purchases, but those will presumably come further down the road – Kuato is planning to release new ‘packs’ as updates every month, so it would make sense to charge for some of those.
Anyway, it’s an intriguing idea, and one that a fair few parents regretting their teenage lack of interest in computer programming may pick up and play too.
Kuato’s CEO Frank Meehan tells tech site VentureBeat that this is part of the plan. “We are focused on making coding fun. We want to innovative when it comes to teaching our kids. The whole point is to get kids to learn, but it is targeted at anyone who wants to program,” he says.
“Nobody has done anything like this before. By the end of it, you will learn variables, functions, core construction of code, and syntax for JavaScript. That’s just the first pack.”
We’re very excited about the potential of this. Hakitzu: Code of the Warrior is a free download from the App Store for iPad only.
