Coding for Kids
It’s Not Fortnite, It’s Crystal Clash!
It’s 4:00 in the afternoon, and school has just let out. Eric and Natalie race out of the classroom to get home. They’re about to join more than 30,000 games daily as they play Crystal Clash Season 2! Once home, they see who can pull out their iPads and start playing the fastest.
Today they’re going to join forces against two other players in an epic 2v2 match in Duo Mode! By now, Natalie’s hero is in the top 10 on the leaderboard. But it wasn’t always this way: For the first ten days she played, she couldn’t get anywhere. She hadn’t completed any Questbook coding challenges or won any Tynker gold. But then she realized that if she built an algorithm and used the right conditional logic, she could break through and start winning more battles!
Now her hero is decked out in new robes she bought with Tynker gold, and she’s sure she’s about to be the champion in today’s match!
In Crystal Clash, Tynker’s multiplayer battle game, kids have to write code in order to pre-program their heroes to fight. It’s all about experimentation– “Will this code finally get me onto the leaderboard?” Because coding drives gameplay in Crystal Clash, losses can be a powerful tool for improving and iterating on your code. Your bot follows exactly what you wrote, so every behavior that your bot exhibits can be explained by its code. Review every line you wrote and figure out exactly why you lost! Debugging becomes an engaging process in Crystal Clash, as you’re able to analyze your bot’s decisions and attempt to pinpoint a flaw in its decision-making. The connection between actual code and desired behavior empowers good coding, where the better you code, the closer the bot will follow your strategy, and hopefully the more you’ll win! (Want to know more about how to play? Read our blog post from when it was released last year!)
Fun with coding, confidence, problem-solving skills, collaboration–that’s what Crystal Clash is all about! Read what some of our players are saying!
Eric and Natalie concentrated hard on making the best code to defeat their opponents. They completed Questbook challenges and high-fived each other as they won Tynker Gold to customize their heros so they stood out in the arena! “This is the best game ever,” Natalie said as she put her iPad away and zipped up her backpack. “It’s like Fortnite, but better!” agreed Eric.
On the surface, Crystal Clash may just look like any other game. But we’ve noticed one of the strongest motivators for kids learning is when they enjoy what they’re doing. Beyond the natural excitement of Crystal Clash, the spirit of competition has shown to drive kids to want to learn more, to get better at the game. Winning becomes an accomplishment–your code did it! And now with the new Friends feature, kids can learn from each other, collaborate, and code together. All these components have collected into a game kids are able to both learn from and be excited about.
Starting this season, kids can now battle alongside a friend, coding together as they play! We’ve also added tons of new Character Customization options, so kids can stand out on in the arena. Purchase unlockables using Tynker gold, which kids can earn by completing objectives in the Questbook.
In just under a month since the launch of Season 2, Crystal Clash players have battled in 572,503 coding challenges, completed 61,037 Quests, and unlocked 22,122 customization options with Tynker Gold! Will your child join the 45,841 Season 2 ranked players on the leaderboard?
Crystal Clash is one of the most fun ways for kids to learn as they collaborate with friends and compete with their enemies. While capturing the same excitement as popular Battle Royale games like Fortnite, the game motivates them to constantly improve their coding skills in order to win. To be the best, kids must develop a unique strategy and iteratively perfect their code for their hero to win. Since the launch of Crystal Clash, players have coded and perfected nearly 700 thousand lines of code! Have your child gain confidence and have fun with coding, like Eric and Natalie!
Ready to make a name for yourself as a Crystal Clash champion?
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