Questionaut: School Got Better

Can you remember the difference between "median" and "mode"? I really cannot think of a more beautiful way to find myself worrying about having forgotten maths aimed at 11 year olds than a new game by Samarost creators, Amanita Design. It's called Questionaut, and it's been created for the BBC's Bitesize educational site.

It's a combination of Amanita's distinctive exploratory gaming (you search the astonishingly gorgeous backgrounds for items that give you a clickable mouse interface, and respond to the results) and Key Stage 2 questions on a broad range of subjects. Once again, the music and sound effects are created by Floex, Tomáš Dvořák, and are all simply stunning. I've played through the game a second time to reach stage 5, so I could listen to one of the ambient, looping tunes as I write this. I'd have actually revised at school if these means had been available.

Obviously the questions will mostly be a little easy for the average reader (although I am embarrased to have screwed one up about a grammatical term - I've got reputation to maintain!). The subjects follow Key Stage 2, from maths to science to English language, with five correctly answered questions letting you float into the next stage. The BBC have put enough effort into these questions that giving the wrong answer will result in an explanation why it is wrong, and even right answers explained in case you're a cheeky guesser. There's also enough that the same won't appear twice for quite a while.

But hey, forget the questions and play it because it's another beautiful endeavour by Amanita. If you have an 11 year old nearby, all the better.

Here's a couple more screenshots because it's so gorgeous. Click on the moon shot for a desktop background-sized image, in case you're as taken with it as me.