News / tricky ways

When Cuboro launched Tricky Ways in October 2013, we fell in love with it immediately.

We have worked closely with Cuboro since the earliest days of playhao, and from the start, known that their toys are real winners. We just needed to bring it to more people. So we have worked ceaselessly to bring down the pricing for this amazing range of toys to make it more accessible. There is an incredible amount of logistics, financing and planning that goes on behind the scenes! Cuboro on its end has played its part by developing new toys which are harder and harder to resist. First the Mystery Cube (which is deserving of whole blog posts on its own), and now Tricky Ways!

Tricky Ways is a marble track system board game. Each player takes turns to try to lead their marble to an empty finish field, passing as many cuboro cubes as possible in the process. If you think that sounds simple, try considering that there are surface and tunnel tracks to take into account, as well as 12 finish fields and only three changing actions allowed per turn. The tricky thing is, the little kids find it really easy to grasp the game, whilst the adults fumble. You can imagine the squeals of laughter and how thrilled the kids get.

As it turns out, Tricky Ways shares many of the same traits as the other members of the Cuboro family.  It gets little kids to PLAN. Yes, actually plan their next move and consider the consequences. The tactile feel of the cubes make planning concrete for the kids. Then the marble is the proof. Did your plan lead to the desired result? i.e. Does the marble roll to the finish field you intended for it to reach? If not, what do you have to do to debug the process?

The children don’t even realize it, but they are actually learning the basics of computer programming as they play. Each cube constituting code, the marble rolling over the proposed route being running code, and adjustments made constituting debugging.

Enuf' said, let’s get down to playing!

Get yours now at: http://www.playhao.com/products/cuborotrickyways