Montreal-based Kutoka Interactive used this week’s Toy Fair in New York City to announce plans to release two new titles for kids based on their popular mascot Mia — Mia: Just in Time and Click & Create with Mia. The titles are expected to be released later this year.
Mia: Just In Time is a time travel adventure designed for kids ages 6 to 10, and like previous Mia titles it combines adventure-style game play with educational content. In Mia: Just in Time, the focus is on basic math skills. In this new two-CD title, players once again join Mia as disaster strikes. This time, her attic home has caught fire and she’s left without a place to live. Mia decides to build a time travel machine so she can undo what’s happened.
Like previous Mia adventures, Mia: Just in Time intersperses sequences where kids learn basic skills, as they help Mia decide what to do next to help accomplish her goal. The game features various math-related activities like working with numbers to create code-breaking sequences, solving addition and subtraction equations, and working with fractions.
Kutoka president Richard Vincent said that the key to the Mia series’ success is that the titles seamlessly integrate learning activities into the game play itself. As a practical example, Mia helps a colony of ants with an assembly line of numbered boxes. By solving addition and subtraction problems using the boxes, players are rewarded by getting one of the time machine pieces that Mia needs. Getting back in time is only part of the adventure, though — once she’s there, Mia has to stop Romaine Rat from setting fire to her attic, and to that end she needs the players’ help too.
The Mia titles have won numerous awards and have sold over 125,000 copies to date. Mia 2: Romaine’s New Hat was also on MacCentral’s Gifts for Gamers list this past December.
Mia: Just in Time is due out in the second quarter of 2001 and will ship on hybrid CDs compatible with both Mac and Windows. The game carries a suggested retail price of US$19.95.
Click & Create with Mia is Kutoka’s first creativity title. The software provides kids with five creative activity centers where they’ll get to practice skills like drawing, painting and pasting as they create greeting cards, multimedia projects, and interactive animation featuring the visages of characters presented in the Mia series of games.
The Painting and Drawing sections of the title provide kids with tools to create images either freeform or by following step-by-step instructions. The software also includes a Projects area where kids can create printable art, and a Multimedia section where kids can create animations featuring characters, objects, music and colorful backgrounds.
Click & Create with Mia comes packaged in a carrying case which includes pre-cut pieces, cartoon eyes and a small bottle of glue, too. The game will ship on hybrid CD-ROM for both Mac OS and Windows, and is expected also to carry a $19.95 price tag when it’s released in the fourth quarter of this year.