Rollercoaster Ride for Your Synapses – Roller Coaster Challenge Sets Your Brain in Motion

HCM Kinzel - December 2017
 

 
Buckle up, ready – go! Children love fast rides with tight turns and wild loop-the-loops. But how are rollercoasters designed? The game Roller Coaster Challenge by ThinkFun allows children aged 6+ to build their own rollercoasters and thus playfully enter the world of engineers. 40 cards with tricky missions provide daunting challenges even for experienced tinkerers.

 

The mission cards feature four different levels of difficulty. Each challenge determines which pieces – pillars, grooves and tracks – you start with. Then you use the remaining pieces to build a functional rollercoaster ride. On the higher levels, you even get tunnels and loop-the-loops for real fun. If you have assembled all elements correctly, watch the waggon glide along the track from the starting point right to the finish – thanks to gravity.

Roller Coaster Challenge playfully promotes children’s STEM skills. It is approachable science and technology! Not only children, but also grown-ups are inspired to create their own rollercoasters. If the waggon doesn’t arrive at the finish just turn the card around to look up the correct solution.

Designer of the game Oli Morris is developer and modeller by day and enthusiastic gamer and puzzle freak by night. Everyday objects just inspire him: He likes to take them apart and then put together piece by piece. Also, he loves to experiment with his 3D printer. That’s how he and his colleagues from the inventor workshop Fuse London Ltd. have already designed more than 100 games and toys – including the hit game Gravity Maze that encourages children to build their own ball tracks.