Indie developer Artax Games released a new game for the Switch eShop yesterday that is intended for children. In MathLand, players take control of Ray, a young pirate boy who is setting out to fight Max, an evil pirate, who has stolen sacred gems from several islands. Ray must sail to these islands, each with a specific math discipline, in order to repel Max and his traps. This is a basic game that would feel at home on mobile platforms, but for what it is, Artax Games has done a nice job with it.
MathLand begins by asking the player their age and then opens up the world map for you to choose which island you want to go to first. There are five islands, one each for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and comparison. Within these islands are about five stages, each requiring some number of currency to unlock. Currency comes from doing a math mini-game in which you solve as many questions as you can in one minute (with the ability to randomly earn some time bonuses during this minute). Multipliers increase the amount of currency you can net in one go. You can choose to do this math mini-game at any time in between visiting island stages, too. Coins that you collect during stages can be spent to play this mini-game, and the more you spend, the higher currency multiplier you can use.
Anyway, once you select an island, and a stage within that island, you control a simplistic 3D platformer in which Ray must avoid environmental hazards and some traps set by Max. These traps include birds that attack in a pattern, cannons that fire, and so forth. Within each stage, there is a hidden, though easily found, collectible coin that displays a cartoony picture of a ship or a pirate. Most stages only take five or ten minutes to complete. Ray has three hearts of health, but checkpoints are generously placed so that if you die from falling into the water or take a hit, you’ll instantly get another chance at it. This type of design keeps the pace moving forward. The formula of the game is essentially this for about twenty-six stages. The math problems are basic, but it’s fun enough to keep things interesting and since the gameplay is so accessible and the stages are short, it’s actually not hard to stick with this game through to its completion in one session.
MathLand isn’t going to blow you away in any one aspect, but the sum of the parts makes for a quality educational game that deserves a nod of recognition if you’re in the market for this. At a scant 133MB in size and priced at $6, MathLand offers a fair value for the type of experience it offers.
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