Playing Machinarium with my five year old
Posted on February 7th, 2010 @ 11:47 pm
Josh with his newly opened robot computer game, Machinarium
This Christmas, one of the gifts I got last minute for Josh, my five year old, was Machinarium, which I’ve blogged about before. It’s a game with fantastic artwork and robots as the main characters.
Naturally, it came as a download. But as smart as Josh is, I was pretty sure software without some physical representation. So while in Dallas for Christmas, I used my dad’s printer that will print on CD’s, and made a decent CD and case for it.
Josh opened the gift Christmas Eve, and he seemed happy enough to get it. Later I found out there was some confusion, and he thought it was his three year old brother Jackson’s game. He was even happier once that was cleared up.
I decided to use the game as a father-son bonding activity. So I told Josh that as long as he behaved, we would play it every Sunday afternoon for an hour or two.
The first Sunday we played, I did feel my patience being tested a bit, as I let him guide me in what to do. I did give him suggestions, but let him decide how to play the game. The game had some hint options built in, which I was fine with using. I did try to get Josh to actually figure things out before we resorted to the hints.
On the sixth Sunday we were playing the game, we beat it. Josh went ahead and gave some feedback on what he thought about the game.
Overall, the experience was fun for both of us. It was nice to bond over a game that you actually had to think to play. I was fairly impressed with how well Josh did. If you’re a father, I would highly recommend playing through a point and click game like Machinarium with your five year old.
