Setup & Rules
There’s a gazillion pieces involved with Turing Tumble. From the various cogs and levers to the various marbles - the main struggling is making sure all these bits and pieces don’t go missing round the house!
The game is accompanied by a wonderful comic book which contains an underlying plot alongside instructions on how to get started. This is marketed as a one player game, but in reality, there always ends up with various members of the family crowding round and joining in on the puzzles.
Players walk through the comic which teaches basic concepts and provides instructions on how to setup puzzles and what the desired outcome should be.
Educational Value
The educational value of Turing Tumble is outstanding. The game teaches the basics of binary logic, sequences, and computational thinking, all while children build “mechanical computers” using ramps, gears, switches, and balls. Each puzzle or challenge corresponds to a logical problem, and kids are tasked with creating a setup that will solve it. This hands-on approach helps make abstract concepts like binary and logic gates much more accessible, even to younger children.
From a parent’s perspective, it’s amazing to watch my child learn the fundamentals of coding and computation without a screen. They are actively experimenting and learning through trial and error, which encourages perseverance, critical thinking, and creativity. My child has grown noticeably more confident with problem-solving skills, which is wonderful to see.
Gameplay and Difficulty Levels
Turing Tumble contains 60 progressively harder challenges via the comic book (which has some Manga style drawings). The story has a narrative that keeps kids invested - we found ours just reading through the comic at one stage to see what happens rather than actually doing the puzzzles.
The puzzles start relatively easy, helping kids to get comfortable with the mechanics of the board and becomes progressively difficult (even for adults). We found that as the challenges got more difficult, our kids would put the game away, only to return to it months later, at which point they could progress further.
There’s a wonderful satisfaction to be had when you solve the puzzles, watching the balls tumble down the board and hearing all the levels shift and cogs turn is very rewarding.
Overall Rating
Overall, Turing Tumble is an impressive educational tool and game. We can’t attest as to whether our children have build foundational concepts in computer science yet - but they definitely have had fun with it, and so have we.
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