What is Tinkatolli?
We came up with the idea while looking at the games that our own children were playing. We saw fun games and educational games, but found very few games that were fun and educational. We started asking ourselves what a game that kids really thought was fun but also taught them valuable lessons would look like? What would a game that kids loved and parents felt good about look like? The concept of Tinkatolli evolved as the answer to these questions.
The Tinkatolli team is very small. We are only 4 people but we are very passionate and really hard working, so we’re able to accomplish quite a bit, pretty quickly.
We obviously want kids to play Tinkatolli, but we also really want them to keep a healthy balance in their life between screen time and other valuable activities. One thing we try to do in Tinkatolli is encourage kids to actually get up and leave the computer. We do this directly, by popping up a green icon every 10 minutes or so telling the player it’s time to get up out of the chair and move. You would be amazed at how many kids actually do jumping jacks or pushups in front of the computer in order to boost their “Move” status in the game. We also do it indirectly, by allowing kids to earn points for things they do in real life. For example, if a kid rides his bike to school, he can log the activity on Tinkatolli and earn points for it.
Are you planing to have any Facebook, Android or iOS apps?
We are already working on our first iOS app and are really excited about it. We have a lot of cool ideas for mobile apps, but at the moment we still have to spend the majority of our development hours on the core game. Facebook is something we are still looking at. We need to get a better idea of how many in our target group are actually on Facebook.
Any projects which you have planned for after this?
One of the most challenging (and most fun) things about a virtual world is that the development never stops. Players look forward to new games, new quests, new characters, new items and more. So we don’t have any projects planned after this, but we have a lot creative and exciting updates, features and tie-ins planned for Tinkatolli.
What are some of the lessons you have drawn from this experience?
Probably the biggest lesson we have learned is: Get it out there quickly. We didn’t actually let players into Tinkatolli until the end of 2010 and even then we kept it closed to all but a handful of players for about 10 months. I think the reason was that we wanted it to be perfect. But nothing is ever perfect.
One of nice things about web based products is that you can fix them as you go. Of course you don’t want to subject your users to a lot of frustrating bugs, but getting them into your game and getting their feedback as early as you can will help you to add the right features and improve quickly. A lot of the best changes we have made have happened since we opened the game up last september – it would have been an advantage to us if we had let players into the game at a much earlier stage.
Email your news TIPS to Editor@Kahawatungu.com — this is our only official communication channel
