Tablet Gaming for the Whole Family
The ubiquity of tablet and smart phone devices mean that new game experience are being created on them for new audiences all the time. For families this is a great, and cost effective, way to get into video-games.
A good way to start finding apps to play is to ask other families with children of similar ages what they are enjoying. In addition to recommendations most of the app marketplaces have a free trial or recommended set of game to get you started.
With this in mind, I tasked a couple of families I work with to look into some recently released and up and coming apps.
First of these was a part game called Heads Up. Some clever design here makes this ideal for play in a family, and because any number of people can play with just one tablet device it also doesn't cost too much.
Heads Up gets one player to holds the Tablet device on their head, the app then displays a word for the other players to act out. The player with the Tablet then needs to guess the word. When they get it right they tilt the app forwards and pass by tilting it backwards.
A nice touch is that the app uses this play-structure to opportunistically film the other players as they act out the various words. The replay of these videos was almost as much fun as the game itself.
The other app was a new game in the Angry Birds series, this time called Star Wars 2. But the interest here is that it uses toy figures to access characters in the game a little like Skylanders.
Not only that, you can also play up to four people in multi-player, making it ideal for play in the family. The simple controls and tactile nature of the physical toys look like this will be fun to play when it is released later in the year.
The most important thing here is to find gaming content that's a good match for your family. Whether you search for apps that match particular interests, be that sports or hobbies, or for a particular style of game-play, maybe puzzle or adventure, try some out together and then swap tips with other families.
