‘Be a child, with your child!’ Activity with Blogadda

9:44:00 pm

When Blogadda announced this activity for kids and their parents, I was super excited!! I welcomed an opportunity to bond with Cub, given we are so busy nowadays.

It might sound surprising why a stay-at-home Mom needs an excuse like this, isn’t she at home the whole day anyway? Good question. However, although I’m the one who dresses him, drops him off at school etc., our fun time is quite limited, which explains why I jumped at this opportunity :-).

The game site is run by Pogo as well as ICICI Pru Life, whose mascot Chintamani is also there to help. (Remember the ‘Chintamani – no chinta, only money’ ads on TV?)

Here is how the story goes: Chhota Bheem and his friends are lost and need to reach Dholakpur. To get there, they have to pass through 2 kingdoms, Dishoompur and Pagalpur, ruled by Danger Raja and Angry Rani respectively. Passing through the kingdoms entails a lot of challenges which they have to overcome one after the other.

There is hardly going to be any kid in India who won’t get excited at the chance to help Chhota Bheem :-). Also, check out the names of the places and their rulers - Cub had a blast saying them out loud!!

Angry Rani and Danger Raja

The games are meant to be played by kids aged 3-11, with help from their parents. They start off easy enough, but get progressively more difficult ;-). I liked that they weren’t too easy, but I do think some of them are a little too hard for the younger ones in this age group.

Here’s a quick description of the games we played, one on each day of the activity. You have to win one game in order to unlock the next.

Game 1: The Journey starts in Dishoompur, where Chhota Bheem and his friends need Danger Raja’s permission to pass through. They need the help of the Gatekeeper, who unfortunately turns out to be their old enemy, Daku Mangal Singh!! The only way out is by defeating him in a game of arm wrestling. Cub enjoyed playing this game, and the sound of cheering really egged him on!

Game 2: Now that they’ve come to the attention of Danger Raja, Chhota Bheem is challenged to a game of cricket. What’s more, he has to face off with the fastest bowler of Dishoompur – Slinga!! Though not as simple as the first game, this was easy too!

Game 3: Danger Raja is angry and needs to be appeased. The Raja being a foodie, Chintamani tells us to bake him a Black Forest Cake since it’s his favorite. This is easily Cub’s favorite game – he wanted to bake the cake again and again!! The instructions are very detailed and realistic – it’s probably the game that takes the longest to complete!

Game 4: The cake has won over Danger Raja and he sets everyone free – except Chhota Bheem. Chintamani comes to the rescue and shows him a way out. But Bheem has to jump over ditches, dive under obstacles and make his way through. This was more like the traditional ‘obstacle course’ type of computer games – perfect for a jumpy 5 year old!

Game 5: We’ve escaped from Dishoompur and are now in Pagalpur, ruled by the Angry Rani, a mean looking friend of Danger Raja. The games start to get tough from this point on, with the first one being the Hammer Throw. Setting the Accuracy meter at the centre was a real challenge, even for me!

Game 6: Angry Rani is all set to torture us. She challenges us to a game of basket ball, which is again a test of accuracy. This is easier than the earlier game and Cub had fun playing it. :-).

Game 7: The Angry Rani is mad that we won and she now challenges Bheem to a round of archery. This was super fun!! Cub loved moving the arrow up and down with the mouse and then firing it!!

Game 8: The Rani doesn’t give up!! Now we’ve got to race with her best racers. Is there any kid out there who doesn’t like a good old fashioned car race game? I thought so!

Game 9: The final leap! The only way to get out of Pagalpur is via a space ship. With loads of help from Chintamani, Chhota Bheem has to guide the space ship avoiding meteors and asteroids, and collect laddoos on the way. This game is a little trickier than it appears, and requires quite a bit of skill :-).

And so we reached Dholakpur successfully! It was a fun journey with a few things that stood out:

1. The way the story unfolded was very entertaining and the games didn’t seem random or disconnected at all. The graphics are also very well executed.

2. Each game can be played multiple times. So if your child hasn’t got a hang of the game on the first try, he can try, try and try again :-).

3. You accumulate points by winning each game, and these points get added up and the winners are featured on Pogo TV!!

4. There are several other prizes to be won on the way. Cub won a Projector Watch which arrived really fast – and boy, was he delighted!!

5. There’s more fun stuff, like uploading your photo to make a group pic. This is super duper fun for kids of all ages. Here’s Cub’s:

7. In addition to these, there is also a link to UBQOOL.com, which directs you to lots of games based on the age of the child. There are games regarding numbers, living things, alphabets, vowels, animal classification and many more.

The few problems that I faced were on the technical side: quite a few times, clicking on links led to an ‘Internal server error’ and the profile picture upload failed every time I tried it :-(.

Other than that, the whole experience was one joyride and Cub and I were sad when the games got over. A huge thanks to Blogadda for giving us the opportunity to participate in this activity!!

Fab

Welcome! I am Fab - work from home Mom and lover of good books, chocolate, music and movies (not in that order!). In my free time, you'll find me here, talking about everything under the sun!