Logical Journey of the Zoombinis is an upcoming puzzle game. It might sound a bit familiar—that’s because Zoombinis was a popular educational game back in the 90s. Now it’s being completely remade by the Technical Education Research Centers, a non-profit group.
Your job is to help the Zoombinis, whose peaceful island has been taken over by the evil Bloats. You customize your Zoombinis with eyes, hair, feet, and noses. Then you take them out into the cruel world. There are three chapters to go through before the Zoombinis reach their new home. Each one presents you with a series of puzzles based on math, patterns, and logic. The puzzles can get really, really hard.
Here’s an example of a logic puzzle. These cliffs are allergic to some of the Zoombinis’ traits.
By using the process of elimination, you figure out what each cliff is allergic to. Then you put those Zoombinis on the correct bridge—but every time the cliff sneezes, a peg holding the bridge falls out. If you make too many mistakes, the bridge will fall into the ravine and you’ll have to leave those Zoombinis behind.
That puzzle is simple, but others are way more complicated. In one level you’re presented with a group of frogs that have colored symbols on their backs. They’re on the bank of a river covered in similarly decorated lily pads. The frogs can jump on lily pads that share their color, or their symbol. The player has to set the frogs on a correct path to carry the Zoombinis across the river. If your frog gets stuck in a dead end… well, see you later, Zoombini.
The original Zoombinis sold over a million copies and won awards for its content. But since it’s so old, it doesn’t work on most modern computers. The new Zoombinis has updated art and gameplay but maintains the classic look and puzzles of the original.
Zoombinis will be $4.99 on the App Store and Google Play. Look for it on August 6th.
