As I’ve said many times before, one of my favorite things about mobile is how you can be totally engrossed in the platform and things still come along to surprise you- Often being around for quite some time before you discovered them. That’s certainly the case with the Mightier game platform, which I briefly heard about before, but never realized how cool it was until today’s announcement of Mini Metro ($3.99) being the latest game to get Mightier support. Stepping back a bit, let’s get into what Mightier actually is.
Basically, kids play games on the Mightier platform while wearing the “Mightier Bioresponsive Learning Loop," which seems to just be a really fancy way to say “bluetooth heart rate monitor." They then use the data collected from the band to adjust the difficulty of games, to teach the lesson that “when they are angry, frustrated, or upset, the world reacts, so they should too." When their heart rate is peaking, the game actually stops, to give them a chance to settle down. In the case of Mini Metro, stop signs come up and the game actually stops sending trains down the track.
I usually roll my eyes pretty hard at a lot of these smart products aimed at kids, but the testimonials they’ve got are pretty compelling. The hypothesis makes a lot of sense too- Kids love playing video games, kids inevitably get upset, and if you can use video games as a tool to teach them how to manage those emotions to calm themselves down, that seems like it has potential to be super powerful.
The list of supported games is pretty short right now, but includes a few titles you likely recognize. As mentioned, Mini Metro is in there, so is You Must Build A Boat ($2.99), Race the Sun ($4.99) and others. They’re also adding new games monthly, so the library should grow to be pretty compelling this year.
The Mightier Foundation Program costs $249 to get started, which gets you the band, expert parent support, and access to the whole Mightier ecosystem of games for three months. After that, it’s $19 a month. I don’t have kids, so it’s hard for me to really judge the value proposition, but having seen some pretty epic tantrums from my friends’ kids, working towards preventing those seems worth it.
Anyway, just a neat thing that crossed my inbox today!
