Child's Play

Longevity

I've never quite understood the obsession some gamers have with the hours of play a game can offer, since few would argue that the greatest movies or books would be improved by doubling their length, but where kids are concerned it does become a more valuable measure of a game's worth. Not only because parents don't want to shell out for a new game every week to keep the offspring amused, but because kids are much more willing to repeat an enjoyable experience over and over. Any parent who has sat through their children's favourite DVD every single day of the summer holiday can testify to this fact.

Longevity for kids, therefore, is less to do with how long it takes to play through the game the first time, but how often you can play the game afterwards and still extract the same enjoyment.

Ben 10 edges out Bolt as far as the most recent kids' games are concerned, simply because returning to previously played levels with new alien forms allows access to new areas and new collectables. Bolt, on the other hand, merely offers a bunch of rather tricky twin-stick shooter bonus levels which held absolutely no appeal for my young test subjects.

This ability to discover new elements through repeated play is a recurring theme in all the games that have found favour with my son and his friends, and it's no surprise that this is another prominent design element of the perennially popular LEGO games. Kids are natural collectors, so any game that taps into this instinct generally captivates its audience far more effectively than a game that just takes you from A to B with minimal distractions. The more characters, costumes and bonuses you can accrue along the way, the more chance of success. Heck, the enduring Pokémon phenomenon even made a catchphrase out of it: gotta catch 'em all. The key lies in making the bonus goodies something useful and fun, which means that any game designer still thinking that anyone gives a toss about concept art should probably reconsider their career.

This probably helps to explain the continuing popularity of Castle Crashers with my son's peer group. Despite being rated for 16 and over, presumably for its cartoon violence and scenes of explicit owl poo, it features several elements that make it ideal for younger players. As well as offering instantly accessible gameplay that walks a fine line between button-mashing mayhem and genuine skill, Castle Crashers is clearly a game designed to be played many, many times over. Finding all the animal orbs, picking up all the weapons, unlocking more and more characters with different magical attacks - this was the stuff of fevered obsession for my boy and his best friends for at least three months last year. It was the sort of all-encompassing passion that resulted in felt-tip pen fan art, home-made comic strips and a sudden interest in knights and castles. If the game hadn't offered so many environments, all accessible for replay at any time, with multiple trinkets to gather along the way, it never would have stayed in rotation for so long.

Castle Crashers also provides another essential ingredient for today's best kids' games: co-op. It makes sense that the audience most attuned to what we'd now call the retro mindset would love the old-fashioned joys of the two-player (or more) game, but it's surprising just how important it seems to be. As an adult, it's easy to forget just what an empowering and immersive experience gaming can be to a young child, and the ability to take your friends into a virtual world and share adventures with them is still a powerful thing.

It's an area where the Bolt game sadly misses the target completely, with no multiplayer elements at all. Few games make for good spectator sports and, given that much of the movie features three animal characters working together, it's also an area where kids looking to recreate the feel of the movie are going to feel short-changed. Ben 10 fares better, with a drop-in co-op system borrowed from - yes - the LEGO games. It's hardly the best two-player experience in town, though. Both players play as Ben, which leads to some confusion, and the camera struggles to keep both characters in view should they wander in opposite directions. The LEGO games suffered in this regard as well, but with a core offering that is nowhere near as polished and with no opportunities for players to actually co-operate beyond pummelling the same enemies, it can prove difficult to smooth over increasingly fractious arguments as the game continues.

In other words, the ability to share the gaming experience is incredibly important for kids, but only if the experience is worth sharing.

Creativity

This is an area where most children's games have yet to make their mark, so it's no surprise that standard fare like Bolt and Ben 10 doesn't have much to offer in the way of user-generated content. That's not to say it won't become increasingly important as consoles become more powerful - the desire to tinker and make is another natural part of childhood.

LittleBigPlanet is the obvious pioneer as far as this new frontier goes, but the finer points of its level designer are clearly beyond the grasp of children. It's a fun sandbox, and once they learn how to blow things up and strap rockets to spongers there are plenty of giggles, but it's all a bit directionless and short-lived. My son even had a brief - and carefully chaperoned - few days of amusement mucking around with balloons, jets, headcrabs and bathtubs in Garry's Mod, the Source Engine editor that lets you do much the same thing in Valve's first-person universe. But then he decided he'd rather go nuts with a machinegun and grenades in a Counter-Strike cabin, and I decided that might be a little too empowering for someone still at primary school.

More interesting is Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts which integrates the creative aspect far more successfully into the gameplay itself. It's rather ironic that the LEGO games, so tiresomely praised previously, fail at something so fundamental to the LEGO brand. For all its other flaws, Nuts & Bolts offers something LEGO should have implemented long ago - the chance to collect pieces, then create and build your own solution for each challenge.