REVIEW: OKIDO Which Way?

17th September 2019 - By Sarah Burns

*Ad | Gifted

We were recently sent the OKIDO Which Way? Game to review with the children, and I was really excited to take a look at this as coding is an area that Daniel has expressed an interest in learning.

The game is a fun introduction to coding and is based on the popular OKIDO characters from both the magazine and TV show.

What’s in the box?

When we opened up the package we found quite a lot inside:

Car
Magnetic game board
16 magnetic tiles
Mission wheel
Screwdriver
Spare batteries
Instructions

The car already has batteries in and there are spare ones included. These are button style batteries so it makes sense to remove these and place in a safe space for the future.

The magnetic game board is folded in half (to enable it to fit in the packaging) and I’d suggest flattening the crease a little before starting, as a flatter game board helps the car move around easier.

Playing the game

The game is fiendishly simple; you simply spin the mission wheel which sets your task. You then use the magnetic tiles to map the journey out from the starting point to the destination and then test the route with the car. It’s very clever and children won’t realise they’re getting an early start on coding skills.

Our Thoughts

The children are aged six, five and three. I was interested to see how they each approached the game. Daniel (6) managed this quite easily and I’d say he is possibly almost too old for this game. Emma and Harry at 5 and 3 found it much more challenging to work out the path to make to get the car from A – B.

I like that there are different levels of challenge, with just one to three stops within one mission to make, and there’s definitely a lot of thought needed to get the car to go to all three stops on some of the missions.

I did find that the tiles had to be laid down reasonably precisely to get the car to travel along, and Em found this frustrating at times when the route was correct but the car wasn’t travelling along correctly as the tiles weren’t placed exactly. It did take a bit of getting used to, but a few times of playing it and she seems to have got the hang of it.

I would have liked to have seen a couple more of the game tiles included; there are a couple of missions where you use all the tiles included, which means that there is only one precise way to get the car to move. I can see the benefit in this as it really requires the children to think about making the best use of the tiles, but I do worry that one might go astray and then we are a bit stuck as we won’t have enough tiles for the game.

Overall though I have been impressed with this. It has required the younger two to work together to solve the missions and it’s a great introduction to the principles of coding and a great STEM game for younger children.