The House
Age 4+
10 minutes
Language
Collaborative
In Brief
Learning objective
By solving the tasks of picking up different objects and relocating them, the players will particularly improve their skills in terms of prepositions and vocabulary.
Game objective
The object of the game is to solve as many of the house chores as possible within the limited time available. A task is solved by placing the objects according to the instructions of the tasks.
Gameplay
The assignment
At the beginning of each game, the players are presented with their assignment consisting of the task(s) that they need to solve. When the players have understood the tasks and feel ready to solve them, they simply need to press the play icon at the bottom right of the screen to get to the room(s) where they can find the object(s) that they need to relocate. At any given time during the game, the players can go back to the overview of tasks by pressing the icon in the bottom right corner marked ‘assignment’. If the players play with a time limit, the countdown will be paused while the players look at the tasks.
Solving the assignment
Looking at the room(s) of the House, the players must find the task-relevant objects and drag and drop them to the correct location according to the task. If the players have chosen to play with a time limit, they will see a small car at the bottom or at the side of the screen. Once the car reaches the end of the road, time is up. When the players have solved all their tasks, the players will return to the overview of “House Chores” where the players will be presented with a new set of tasks. This will continue until time runs out.
The importance of teamwork
If the assignment consists of several tasks, players can benefit from dividing the tasks among them. If the night setting is enabled, teamwork is especially important: One player uses their flashlight to find the new location for the object in question, while another player locates the object and moves it to the new location.
End of the game
After time has expired, the screen will show a small car driving past a number of houses. The number of houses represents the total number of assignments that the players managed to solve. The players can then try again to see if they can beat that score, or they can adjust the settings to make the game easier or more challenging.
Settings
The number of rooms
The players can choose to play in up to 6 rooms at a time. The more rooms they choose, the more difficult it gets to find the objects and their new location.
Room types
This setting allows the players to choose which type of room(s) to play in. For example the kitchen or the shed. Choosing a specific room allows players to practice words that are associated with that particular room in the House. The players can, however, also get the game to choose the room(s) randomly by selecting ‘All rooms’.
Time settings:
The players can choose the amount of time for solving the assignments: 3, 5 or 10 minutes or no time limit at all. By adding a time limit, the players get to experience how well they perform under time pressure. They also get a target that they can try to beat in a later game.
Light settings
The players have the choice of playing in daylight where they, at all times, can see the whole room or playing at night where they must solve their tasks with the aid of a flashlight. By choosing the low-visibility option, it will become a lot more challenging to find the task-related objects and their new location.
Text settings
The players can enable ‘Automatic reading’ to have the game read out the tasks. By not enabling the automatic reading, the players will have to read and understand the tasks themselves.
Object settings
The players can choose what kind of objects the tasks should consist of. For example, the players can choose that the room(s) should only contain the objects that they need for solving their task(s), or that additional, non-related objects are also present in the room(s). By adding additional objects to the task-specific objects, it will become more challenging to locate the desired objects. The option to choose between ‘Matching objects’ and ‘Mixed objects’ gives the players the opportunity to practice a variety of different nouns or to focus on category-specific nouns.
Task settings
The players can decide if the objects should be represented only by their written name or also by an image in the task description. By not enabling the image option, the players must be able to read and understand the name of the object. Under ‘task settings’, the players can also choose how many tasks they want to solve at a time (from 1 to 8 tasks). The higher the number of simultaneous tasks, the more challenging it becomes to command the assignment. With a high number of tasks, it could prove advantageous to divide the tasks among the players.