Is Angband healthy for 6-year olds?

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by quarague

I think what happens here is that your son likes angband because you like it. You enjoy playing it and that is what he wants to emulate, it's all about the father-son experience. I suppose you do a lot of explaining when you are playing and that's what draws him in. You can let him play but I would guess it's only interesting to him as long as you are playing with him. It's still a great thing to do with your kid but I think the actual game of angband has fairly little to do with it.

Maybe, maybe not. Kids can get rather fanatic about games they like. However sometimes it is fun to just watch someone else playing, that is why I have used almost as much time watching experts playing civ IV than I have used playing it.

[Wanderlust]

Originally Posted by quarague

I think what happens here is that your son likes angband because you like it. You enjoy playing it and that is what he wants to emulate, it's all about the father-son experience. I suppose you do a lot of explaining when you are playing and that's what draws him in. You can let him play but I would guess it's only interesting to him as long as you are playing with him. It's still a great thing to do with your kid but I think the actual game of angband has fairly little to do with it.

That's a very fair observation but in this particular case it's clearly about Angband as well. My son is nuts for numbers. He used to spend hours and hours counting. He is fascinated by all the numbers in Angband, and by the way the numbers interact together to create an interesting story.

For sure he and I love doing stuff together but certain activities become favorites. And since he's excited and curious about numbers and math, we do lots of things together along those lines (i.e., chess, origami, number games, angband). He and I seem to have similar kinds of numbers-oriented OCD-inclined brains ...

Anyway I intend to start reading The Hobbit to him tonight ...

[Bowman]

Originally Posted by Ingwe Ingweron

Hmmm, I think I need help with this one....

Well, I only said it would be easier, not easy . Angband can be (much) more than a little addictive, but at least you never need to worry about waiting through some 15-30 cutscene so that you can save and quit.

[Wanderlust]

Truth be told, my interest in finding "something better" began when my 14 year old son got addicted to Geometry Dash Lite on his iPad.

Judging from the amount of time he spends with it, that game is equally addictive to Angband. However, it has zero depth, delivers no lasting rewards, and forces the player to spend 10% of his time watching advertisement videos.

This kid is a competitive chess player and I was appalled how easily he became "victim" of what I consider an abusive game. It's designed to trigger the "immediate gratification" response just enough to keep the player hooked ... so they can show more paid ads. Yuck!

So yeah ... video games are addictive. We all know that. But some addictions are better than others ..

Anyway Angband seems to be teaching my son all kinds of little lessons that I really think may be useful for him (which are glaringly lacking in commercial games). Such as the fact you can die. And the idea of caution in general as a preventive measure. And be selective who you kill.

[tprice]

Originally Posted by Wanderlust

Anyway I intend to start reading The Hobbit to him tonight ...

So how is he liking the hobbit so far? I remember my dad reading it to me when I was little...

[HallucinationMushroom]

I like watching my daughter play nethack. She started at 3 and is now 7. That grabbed her a lot more because I play tiles with nethack, has mouse move, and almost always provides some kind of 'story', even within the limited 2-5 levels she manages. I would just prop her on my lap when I played, and when she reached a certain point that she could hit the buttons I just let her play. I mean, if your son is gravitating towards roguelikes, why not? Shit, that's the dream, isn't it?

My daughter is much more of a Minecraft player, and is a whiz at that. I picked up Hack-Slash for us to play over X-Mas break... it is some kind of DoubleFine game mish-mash of legend of zelda and programming? Or so I was told.

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by HallucinationMushroom

My daughter is much more of a Minecraft player, and is a whiz at that. I picked up Hack-Slash for us to play over X-Mas break... it is some kind of DoubleFine game mish-mash of legend of zelda and programming? Or so I was told.

Hack and Slash is much more of a programming game that uses a Zelda-like perspective; there's basically no Zelda-style gaming in it. I still enjoyed it though. The basic conceit is that when you hit an enemy (or any other active object in the game), instead of damaging them, you get to modify their source code and/or tweak the variables that represent them. This works into the puzzles, so e.g. there's a gate that demands a password which you cannot possibly determine from outside means, but if you hack the gate, you can look into its code to find what text string it's expecting, and thus learn what the password is (and you can change the password to "lol butts" or whatever if it strikes your fancy).

I'm already a programmer, so I found the game very easy to get into; I'm curious how other people who have less experience will fare.

[HallucinationMushroom]

Cool, I'll let you know how it goes! The wife wanted her to have some kind of programming exposure and I recall reading about the game from RPS, so maybe it will give her some good entry level exposure to coding. Lord knows I know nothing about it!

[MadeOfBees]

I started playing moria around the same age back in the 80s. It was a very positive experience for me overall. It taught me to learn to strategize, learn to prioritize things (be it spells, loot, etc.) After a year or two of playing, I started screwing around with wizard mode, which lead to me wondering why numbers had letters in them, which led me to learning how to code.

I could already read at the time, but it definately improved my reading, since there are a lot of words your average kid would not encounter, and since they dont really explain them, I learned how to intuit a words meaning from its context.

Id say let them have at it, theres nothing really offensive or inappropriate for a kid in there.

[MattB]

My son started playing Angband when he was 6. By the time he was 7 he felt confident enough to enter a Vanilla competion and, largely unsupervised by me, got to dlvl23:

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=16026

He cried for an hour when he died, but I thought it was good to be upset at that (if you see what I mean).

Even now, at the age of 9, he occasionally puts down Grand Theft Auto, or whatever, (I know, but a couple of his friends play it...) and rolls up a character. He's currently got a warrior at statgain - a new depth record for him - and he's starting to get nervous!

It's a great game for kids, IMHO. It teaches reading and typing. You're using a keyboard not a console controller, after all. Permadeath is an important life lesson. You need concentration and imagination - both in spades. What's not to love?

It's also got him interested in programming. God help us!
(He's getting a Raspberry Pi for Christmas from his Nanny.)
I hope he's not reading this...