Over on Kickstarter, Tom Beatty of The Dimension’s Edge just launched a new Kickstarter for the development of Monster Mutants Multiplication, a new PC/Mac program designed to teach kids about multiplication. A father himself, Tom realized his daughter was having trouble with learning her multiplication tables, so he decided to make it as fun for her as he could.
The game comes with three different ways for kids to learn their tables. They each use a cast of up to 16 cute and friendly monsters to help give the kids visual cues, subtle hints to the answers they need. Tom does a fine job of explaining it all himself.
Tom’s clearly put a lot of thought into the game, and it includes a few neat tweaks that separate it from other programs of its type. For one, you can set it to only bring up problems that the player has gotten wrong recently, which allows you to target more challenging sections rather than go over things that have already been learned cold. The game can also produce a progress report that not only shows how the player is doing but also identifies those challenging areas. It even displays how long it takes the player to come up with each answer, so you can shoot for improving times as well.
You can get a basic downloadable version of the game (numbers up to 12) for $15, or a deluxe version (numbers up to 16) for $20, and higher levels of backing come with CD-ROMs, T-shirts, and more. If you have a kid in your home who’s learning the multiplication tables, go check out Monster Mutants Multiplication before time on the Kickstarter runs out.
Disclaimer: I’ve known Tom for years, although we’ve still yet to work on anything together.
