ItzaBitza is an excellent educational game developed to inspire children (4+) creativity.  It was released in 2008 by a Microsoft spin off company.  The application uses clever drawing recognition algorithms called “Living Ink” to determine what a child is drawing on the screen and then animates and has the on screen characters (called Sketchies) interact with it.

It all happens in 2D on a very colourful background.

I downloaded the demo yesterday and played it with my 5 year old daughter.  At first she was a little apprehensive to explore and get things wrong.  When asked by Sketchy to draw a house she quickly handed the mouse over to Mummy.  Eventually she had enough courage to try some drawing and also quickly found the eraser button to get rid of drawings she thought were wrong or didn’t look right.  I tried to tell her that it didn’t matter whay they looked like – but she was insistent.

Eventually I went into the other room after she seem confident with the interface and I wasn’t called back into the room every other second to explain something.  I found she was much more explorative without me there.  I watched from a distance as she was able to interpret what the Sketchy wanted her to draw using the mouse over words text to speech feature.

Just when I thought games were stiffeling imagination I found this game.  I’d certainly recommend it for any parent.  It has all the classic elements of gameplay and good learning pedagogy.

Worth a look.  You might even get hooked yourself.