Blast Through the Solar System With This Educational Video Game

A new iPhone app is trying to bring a whole new level of space knowledge to kids. Professor Astro Cat’s Solar System is a game that will give your elementary-school children a fun way to learn facts about temperatures on Mercury, the atmosphere of Venus, and more. 

Designed by Minilab, a creative studio for kids’ products, it’s based on a children’s book called Professor Astro Cat’s Frontiers of Space, and it aims to teach kids about the solar system one game at a time. The app lets you soar through the solar system using your swiping fingers as rocket fuel. Clicking on each planet leads you into a game level devoted to that celestial body. To get kids engaged in what is otherwise a laundry list of planetary facts, you swipe, tap, and unzip the information. 

After learning about each planet, you can test your newfound knowledge with a “jetpack challenge,” a true/false quiz. Some of the questions are surprisingly hard for a game designed for 7- to 10-year-olds; for instance, do you know how fast Earth is flying through space? At the end of each successfully completed quiz, you get a certificate proclaiming that you’ve completed a training mission, and a mechanical part that, after enough quizzes, can be combined with others to be assembled into a rocket ship. 

The game is cute, with engaging graphics and plenty of interactivity. It’s definitely an educational app first, though, and the cut-and-dry factoids presented may lose some kids. But for those young uber-nerds who can’t wait to spout off about the chromosphere, it’s a whimsical, interactive textbook to the stars.

Want to see it in action? Check out the trailer below or find it on the iOS app store.

All images courtesy Minilab Ltd