Burning Things: Pro-social Behavior Facilitated by Portrait Mode Comfort

December 19, 2011 in Games

[prMac.com] Tel Aviv, Israel - While watching videos or reading interactive books can be just fine in landscape mode, our recent tests show that young children, with their tiny palms, struggle to play games while holding their devices horizontally. The initiation for the study happened as Gur Ilany, founder of Samuramu, watched his 3 year old daughter toss birds in impossible angles in Angry Birds. Apparently, this wasn't a coincidence - as Samuramu initiated further testing among toddlers and pre-teens to support the thesis and found interestingly similar results.

The game created based on the tests, 'Burning Things' was designed with young children in mind from the grounds up. In a world of noisy, persuasive and visually polluted apps, Samuramu carefully crafted a quiet, clean and artistic game experience. The game is set in Can Town, where the young player assumes the roles of Cat and Dog as they ride the red firefighter truck, rescuing animal inhabitants from a massive fire.

"We wanted to create a positive experience, and following a concept workshop with PhD Guy Doron, a child psychologist and senior lecturer in Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center, we realized that while there are many games for kids, very few of them promote pro-social behavior, as simple as helping others." explains Ilany.

Forming the concepts of usability for younger ages and pro-social gaming, the production task became much clearer for the team. Burning Things' game world is expressive, colorful and rich, but at the same time pleasant and simple. Children can play at their own pace, be it rushing their red truck across houses, trees, snowy hills and even cafes, or stopping to take the time, as they like.

Burning Things will be available on the App Store for Christmas 2011.

Device Requirements:
* iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation) and iPad
* Requires iOS 4.0 or later
* 21.5 MB

Pricing and Availability:
Burning Things 1.0 is $2.99 USD (or equivalent amount in other currencies) and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Games category.

Samuramu, an independent games studio based in Tel Aviv, is focused on carefully crafted game experiences for toddlers, children, and grown ups. At Samuramu we aim to create games that form a serene, clean and naive moment in a world of noise, rush and visual pollution. Our published games are Cavernous, a cave crawler bat bouncing game, its free iteration, Cavernous Lite, and Burning Things, the firefighter themed game for young children. Copyright (C) 2011 Samuramu. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

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Gur Ilany
Founder
Israel

Games  Children  Young  Usability  Positive  Proscoail  Clean  Kids  Fire  Fighter  Truck  iOS