You probably know about Sesame Street from TV as it’s one of the most popular shows among children. The show is focused on the educational side of activities and, to no surprise, this new Kinect title also tunes in to that aspect.

The game was showed off at GamesCom so that was a good opportunity to see how it works. The game is structured in 7 chapters or stories, one chapter for each monster, and each chapter has 5 parts. Unfortunately, I got to try only one chapter as it was the only one demoed.

So, when I got to start I had to choose the part of the chapter I wanted to play. To navigate though the chapter, thus from one part to another, I was supposed to flip the page by grabbing the side of the page. I liked that because it was different than what I’ve seen before and it’s quite intuitive.

Out of the 5 parts I’ve tried out three (all available there) which are outlined below (theme-wise).

Singing

Throughout the game, the girl that was supposed to present it explained everything I had to do. I didn’t see any suggestions on the screen on how this section should be played, however, the game was in German so I completely missed anything that was said in the game including the playing guidance.

The idea of this part is that at the beginning you hear a flower sing and then you need to arrange a series of flowers in such a way that it would imitate the initial song. Arranging the flowers is done one by one, so you start with the first and you move up and/or down until the flower is making the first sound of the song. When you get it to the right level, the flower changes its color to show that you’ve got it right. And then it moves to the second flower and you do the same. This part seemed pretty easy but I had no idea if I should go up or down so I was basically moving randomly until I’d get it right. This part of the game is probably trying to develop the knowledge in musical notes.

I did this singing part by myself and then in multiplayer-mode with the girl. Basically, if someone comes in Kinect’s reading area, then you could see in a corner that, in order to join the game, you had to wave your hand. The game would not get interrupted by a second player joining. The second player would have its own series of flowers to match with the song. If one of the players leaves, then the game continues with the remaining player.

While it worked nicely I did notice a few bugs:  when switching from two players to single player, Kinect got confused on whom to read so I ended up trying to play while nothing actually happened. I could also be a complete idiot because every time the girl would play the game, everything would work fine. A second issue was that, unintentionally, I managed to match the whole song while I was chatting on the side. How? I was gesticulating while talking and somehow Kinect read it all; so with one arm I managed to get all flowers in the right place. I don’t think that was supposed to happen but it can also be that, because this game is made for kids who are a lot smaller than me, it is much more sensitive to movement.

Flower hopping

In this part of the chapter you would be one of the monsters (I was Cookie Monster) and  you had to fly (straight up) and try to touch all these flowers so that they would open. In order to fly I had to move my arms up and down, basically just like birds fly, and slightly bend to left or right to give the direction. By flying above a flower it would automatically open. When opened, some of the flowers were blowing out air and for a few seconds you could stop moving your arms and continue to go up. These were great moments to take some breaks.

I’ve played most of this part in multiplayer but I noticed that the second player was quickly seen and counted in the game. During the game, the monsters were talking to each other and, once again, I could not understand a word but the girl told me the discussion is a sort of guidance like “try it again” or congratulate each other on performance.

I found this part very accurate and quite intensive on the arms but I was probably moving them harder than I should have.

Bringing happiness

This part started with a pale-colored nature image. In this nature image there were a few bins and I had to catch some balls (looked like they were made out of branches) and throw them into the bins. When I would get a ball in the bin, the nature would get more colorful until the last successfully thrown ball. There is constant advice given to the player (again, in my case it was in German).

It took me a while to be able to catch the balls and then actually get them in the bin. I managed to throw most of them further than the bin so that became quickly frustrating. Later, I’ve discovered my moves were too big….once again, I was trying too hard.

As you progress, you end up with two bins, one green and one red, and the balls have these colors too so you have to throw the red balls in the red bin and the green balls in the green bin.

One problem I had with this section was that I had moments when my ball would be thrown without me even moving. That took me by surprise.

Conclusion

All in all this looks like a solid game that will grab the hearts and souls of our little ones. The game is charming, educational and has everything to appeal to kids. The game might be a little bit too kiddy for an older audience but for parents to play this with their kids will be an absolutely joy!