Free Computer Games for Kids

Don't know what to do on a rainy day? Here are 3 computer games you can play with your kids which are not only fun but have some educational aspect too!

Ah yes, and they are free too!

Magic Pen

Magic Pen is a online flash game you can play at http://magic.pen.fizzlebot.com/

In Magic Pen you have to move a red ball to a flag. You cannot move it directly, but you have to do it by drawing other objects like balls, triangles are rectangles. The laws of physics will help you: Drop a ball onto a triangle, it will bounce off horizontally, roll and push your red ball. You can also build bridges and ramps. In higher levels you'll have to build more complex constructions using pins and hinges.

Some levels are quite complicated, so younger kids might need some help. But you always can skip a level and as there are no time restrictions it is OK if it takes a little longer to build what you want. It's also nice that you can jump to any level you want. This currently is the favorite game of my 7 year old son.

Light Bot 

Another online flash game. Play it at http://www.gameroo.nl/games/light-bot

In Light Bot the player has to control a small little robot around a checker board world. To do this you have to build a command sequence (commands are e.g. go forward, turn left, turn right, jump). The robot has to light up all blue fields by stepping on them and executing the "light" command.

This game concept basically teaches the foundations of programming. After the first few levels you will need to write sub-routines (not too complicated, the game only allows 2 of them) as the length of your command sequence is limited.

After the first couple of levels this gets a bit tricky. I suggest to play it together with your kids (I'd say 9 years or older). Finding a solution as a team makes this great fun. Unfortunately you cannot skip levels and they get hard quickly. We got stuck at level 10.

Pushover

Pushover is a remake of an old Amiga game. Get the downloadable PC game at http://ishisoft.remakes.org/

In Pushover you have to arrange a bunch of dominoes in such a way that they all will fall over when knocking over a single domino. The player controls a little ant who can pick up the dominoes and carry them to a more suitable place. Finally you knock over one domino and hope that they all fall.

I did not show this game to my kids yet, but I know that this is good. I played it for hours and hours myself when I was younger :-)

This is a classic logic game. It starts off pretty easy, but gets quite complicated quickly too. There's a time limit for each level, but even when you were not fast enough you can advance to the next level by using a "token". You earn a token when solving a level in time. You cannot skip levels but you can continue at the last played level when restarting the game.

There's also an editor included for creating your own levels but I didn't try it. 

Hope you like my little selection of free games.
If you know any other good free games, I'd be happy to hear from you (add a comment to this article).

Andreas