Education Games and Singing Robots

LocoMatrix was formed in 2008, after an incident in a carpark. Having hiked across the South Downs (local to our base in Brighton, UK), my wife and I stopped at a pub for a quick drink. Noticing a family in a people carrier with 2 rather large children sat in the back with their games consoles, drinking cola and eating packets of crisps, we moaned how children just don’t seem to run around outside anymore. I said that maybe if they had a portable computer game that encouraged them to move about, it might be more appealing. And so Fruit Farmer was born – a game like Pacman where, you as the user were chased through a maze by killer wasps whilst you tried to collect oranges. Of course, this was back in the days before smartphones (remember Nokia?) and our little mobiles had to be GPS-enabled using Bluetooth dongles. For this we won the most Awesome Use of Digital Technology prize.

Impressed with Fruit Farmer and a mobile treasure hunt we created too, the Technology Strategy board awarded £50k to us (jointly with Brighton University) for developing an educational game for schools. We floundered for a while (actually a year) to come up with a game that would be educational, fun, and fit in with an aspect of the curriculum. The idea finally arrived on a visit to Lullingstone in Kent – an archaeological simulation where children could (in Time Team fashion) dig up a Roman villa. And so Invisible Buildings was born. Now played by over 4000 children both in schools, and in conjunction with English Heritage at a number of stately homes and castles (watch out for more of these this year), Invisible Buildings has been “the best day of my life” for a number of children. We are pleased to announce that Invisible Buildings 2 will be available soon.

Invisible Buildings is intended (but not exclusively) for schools and museums. We have been asked on many occasions for a game that could be played outdoors by families on birthdays, picnics and other celebrations: something a bit different than say going bowling. We listened to you and have been working hard behind the scenes. We have taken the best bits from IB and turned into a super series of adventure games that will also appeal to the geocache community. We are just putting the finishing touches to the first game and it will be available FREE on the app stores. Further games will be available soon at under £5 (look out for our Kickstarter campaign which will be starting shortly). We invite you to meet the Geos as they star in GeoCrash! Join them as they create mayhem in the town where they live. And where they are likely to meet dinosaurs, pirates and, even, aliens.