Serious Game Classification

Gertrude's Secrets Learning Company (U.S.A.), Learning Company (U.S.A.), 1984  

Informations Analyses Discussion
 

Classification

RETRO SERIOUS GAME
(Edugame)

Keywords

Purpose

Besides play, this title features the following intents:
  • Educative message broadcasting

Market

This title is used by the following domains:
  • Entertainment
  • Education

Audience

This title targets the following audience:
Age : 12-16 / 17-25
General Public

Gameplay

The gameplay of this title is Game-based
(designed with stated goals)

The core of gameplay is defined by the rules below:

Similar games


Gertrude's Secrets Gertrude's Secrets is, in brief, what you get when you take Warren Robinett's Adventure for the VCS (right down to the quacking dragon-duck!) and turn it into an educational object-sorting game for a younger audience than the earlier Robot Odyssey and Rocky's Boots.

Gertrude is a benevolent goose who maintains what might be considered a dungeon: a complex of chambers containing puzzles which yield secrets -- treasures -- upon completion. But instead of monsters, the rooms contain something much scarier to a child: education in the fields of logic, pattern-matching (of colours, shapes and textures) and sorting, categorized internally as Array Puzzles, Loop Puzzles and Train Puzzles.

The player interacts with the game world by moving a cursor around the screen with keyboard or joystick, picking up and dropping objects in appropriate places to make things happen -- triggering puzzles or attempting to solve them. The puzzles gradually ramp up in difficulty, and a wide selection of whimsical trophies are awarded. To prolong gameplay enjoyment and the exploration of the play environment, Robinett's trademark easter eggs are in the eaves, as well as UI manipulation well before its time, allowing players to "skin" the game with different tilesets or manually edit individual tiles. [source:mobygames]

Distribution : Retail - Commercial
Platform(s) : Apple II - Commodore 64 - PC (Dos)

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