Let the rabbit eat carrot board game, but can exercise the baby's programming thinking

Although the epidemic has made people have to stay at home, there are still many rich games to satisfy children's exploration and curiosity! Today's recommendation is this set of board games from Poland, Pix Blocks Run It Bunny!

To be honest, as a parent of an elementary school student, programming and programming thinking have been ringing in the ears for many years, but if you are not a parent in the programming industry, it may be difficult to find a correct way to guide.

For example, logic in programming, binary, programming languages, network security, etc... Now many merchants have developed a variety of games, let the baby first practice the drill, especially without a computer to experience programming thinking.

Until I met this "Run Bar Rabbit", which is a board game that can exercise the editor's thinking, the goal of the game is very simple, that is, to make the rabbit eat carrots.

The developer of this board game is PixBlocks, Poland's largest provider of programming education services, and the inventor is Dr. Krzysztof Krzywdziński, who is engaged in research at the School of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznan (founded in 1519). They also released this board game in conjunction with Polish GRANNA in order to realize the original intention of learning to program without a computer.

"As a programmer and teacher, and more importantly as a father, I know that interest is the best teacher, and this is the most important principle I followed in designing Pixblocks."

Therefore, the core of this board game is "to learn programming without a computer and cultivate programming thinking".

In the Pix Blocks Run Bar Rabbit game, in order for the rabbit to eat carrots, the player has to design a path for the rabbit to break through various levels and obstacles. By solving the task card design problem, let your rabbit move forward, and correctly solve one problem at a time is the cultivation of programming thinking.

A good program can lead the rabbit to find carrots, and if the rabbit can eat all the carrots, it means that the program is correct.

Set the key position as shown below, then the carrot is falling, but under the action of "gravity", the rabbit itself fell into the pit first, so such a program does not work.

Then it can also be redesigned with the help of a ball that makes the rabbit turn around and it succeeds.

Many times of such practice has exercised the child's "consequence thinking" and anticipated the consequences before doing things.

This board game itself will not teach children to write code or specific programming skills, but will subtly enlighten children's programming underlying thinking.

If you encounter problems along the way, you need to go back to the starting point and redesign the route. The process is similar to programming, where players write, run, and debug programs, and if there are bugs, they need to be redesigned.

In the game, you can also use various function cards such as keys, windmills, etc. to avoid falling into an endless loop.

Here are a few rules to be made clear: plant atrophy, gravity principle, clearing, carrots, plants, arrows, keys, portals, obstacles, and balls.

For example, rabbits can eat plants, arrows, keys, and portals in front of them.

Eating a plant causes it to shrink and because of the principle of gravity, the plant and the things on it will fall with it.

After eating the arrow, the rabbit will change direction as instructed by the arrow.

Padlocks of that color are removed after the key is eaten, and falls according to the principle of gravity.

Obstacles can change the rabbit's direction, and grass, padlocks, and in some cases even a ball or another rabbit can be an obstacle.

In the picture below, eat the red key - unlock the red padlock - plants and carrots fall under the law of gravity - encounter obstacles to change direction - successfully eat the carrot.

This board game also has an open source design that opens up endless possibilities. Suitable for children who are particularly fond of exploring to find out the fancy ways to play.

For example, the answer is not unique; it can challenge the difficulties alone and support the confrontation of 2-4 people.

In the multiplayer level design, you can repeat the simulation indefinitely, and you can do a different chess game design each time;

After experiencing the official 64 experience cards, you can also design your own question card tasks on the single-player level.

In the confrontation game, the player must not only plan the optimal route for their own rabbit, but also find a way to destroy the route of other players, and the player who eats the most carrots wins.

For example, in multiplayer, Evc and John are blue rabbits, red rabbits, and two carrots. From Figure 2 to Figure 7, the layout is completed, and then it starts to move, each player can only take one step forward at a time, and the goal is to eat more carrots.

Can you guess that it's Evc-Blue Rabbit and John-Red Rabbit, who are the winners?

Detailed gameplay can be seen in this

If I go back to the beginning, why can PixBlocks learn to program? First of all, the game process itself is actually a complete programming process:

Put the right objects in the right place, design a rabbit's path of travel - [write the program];

According to the rules, let the rabbit go step by step - [Run the program];

If the rabbit is "killed" or "locked" in the middle of the road, it means that there is a problem with the route design, and you have to go back to the first step, adjust and retry - [debugger and fix bug];

If the rabbit eats all the turnips, the challenge is successful! - [Programming task completed].

Second, the language of play is the language of computers that children can understand:

1. Mental calculation of rabbit to --- [single step debugging]

2. Rabbits --- between obstacles [Loop/Dead Loop]

3. Whirlwind/Portal --- [Jump] function, [goto statement], which allows the execution to jump from one place to another, out of the loop, or jump to another place that seems irrelevant but you need to control.

4. The key unlocking --- [event trigger], when a certain situation occurs, it can trigger the occurrence of another event;

5. The arrow --- equivalent to the change of the [variable] in programming, and after the rabbit eats it, it will change direction (U-turn);

6. The ball --- equivalent to the [conditional judgment] in programming, and different branches are executed according to different judgment results. If there is an open space behind the ball, the rabbit can push the ball forward; if there is an object behind the ball, the ball is an obstacle, and the rabbit must bounce back;

7. Games can help children become familiar with 3 basic programming language structures such as sequential structure, loop structure, and conditional structure;

8. Every element and operation in the game corresponds to important programming thinking: decomposition steps, classification thinking, consequence thinking, condition judgment, variables... ；

Of course, back to the game itself, the key is to allow children to subtly get the programming ideas behind these concepts!

It is for children who have no programming foundation at all, can play;

It is very necessary for children who are taking programming lessons to play!