XYZ Toy Game Review

     This week I tested out a few features of the Google Arts & Culture Website. They have several options for playing with are in digital space. from augmented reality filters and art related games. For the purpose of this course in New Media, New Literacy, I found the game XYZ Toy an exciting and effective game to play, with image to word association as its objective.

    To start, the game passes several scrabble like tiles through the screen, each letter is composed of different items or images, such as mirrors or shells. This style of art is called typography, the combination of photography and type. Next, the game shows you several blank tiles and a few x's. There is an option to scroll the clue tiles. Using the key board you type in the letters to fill in the blank tiles. The player is also given a limited number of failed guesses, represented by red Xs under the blank tiles. As the player solved an answer an link popped up to lead you to more information on that subject subject

    As my son(7yo) and I sat together on the coach we were puzzled and stumped by this game. He with his limited writing ability and me with my apparent lack of noting the obvious, had a great time trying to beat each other to the final solution. It was challenging and enriching for us to play together. Walker developed some new words in his vocabulary, we learned about whales and Egypt together and had some friendly competition. 

What I liked about this game as an educator is that there was no score and there isn't an end to the game. This is an open ended game with little risk to the modest player, if you "fail" at solving a work you are not panelized, offered the solution and the link to the information still pops up. Now I definitely do not believe that all games should run this way but it offers enough challenge and reward for the player that is advancing with out scoring or declaring them the winner.

I also like that the game offers students an opportunity to hone their visual literacy skills by offering several related images in different shapes and then associating it to words and letters. The player has to think in association to what they are seeing to their knowledge of language. If they do not have the knowledge, this game offers opportunities to give images, words and information to build it.

Game Link:

https://artsandculture.google.com/experiment/xyz-toy/UwE3SIm4koBD7Q

Augmented Reality options at the bottom of the Play page:

https://artsandculture.google.com/play