Carmen Sandiego Adventures in Math facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Carmen Sandiego Adventures in Math
Series logo
Genres	Educational game
Developers	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publishers	The Learning Company
Platforms	Wii, Windows 8
First release	The Lady Liberty Larceny December 15, 2011
Latest release	The Island of Diamonds March 22, 2012

Carmen Sandiego Adventures in Math is a series of five games released in 2011/2012 for the Wii, and is part of the Carmen Sandiego franchise. The style of the games are reminiscent of comic books. The 5-part series were the first English language console games from the Carmen Sandiego franchise since The Secret of the Stolen Drums. These "short, educational detective adventures" are "only available as a download through the Nintendo Wii Shop". The games were developed by Gamelion Studios, and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. They could take up to 6 players, and required 600 Wii points. Maths topics included in the games include: Symmetry, Identifying angles, Graphing coordinates on a grid, Logic puzzles, Working with fractions, Solving equations, and Tangrams. The games are designed for elementary learners across grades 3–5.

Plot

The five games follow a similar plot. Carmen Sandiego and her VILE henchmen stole an item from a location, and The Chief has asked the player to go out and catch the thief. This mystery sees the player "chatting with a variety of colorful game characters in cities around the world".

Gameplay

The aim of the game is to "travel the globe, solve brain-twisting math puzzles, and catch the crook". The game has 3 modes: Story Mode (a single-player playthrough of the game), Practice Mode (playing individual puzzles in single-player), and Multiplayer Mode (completing individual puzzles the fastest against other players). The player uses "the Wii Remote to point at the screen and highlight characters to talk to, or point to the part of the screen you want your agent to walk to. You can also press and hold the B Trigger at any time in these scenes, at which point your cursor transforms into a hidden object scanner". Each location will provide clues which will reveal where to head to next, and several Hint Coins are also scattered around the environments. After finding three clues, the player can study the dossiers of the V.I.L.E.'s motley crew of criminals and deduce who is the villain".

In these point and click adventures, players solve puzzles in the various environments that they explore, in a system described by Nintendo Life as "much like any of the Professor Layton games". The site adds "Using your Wii Remote as a pointer, all you need to do is aim at the screen and press A to click on the characters you want to talk to or parts of the puzzles that you want to interact with. The pointer can also be used to find hint coins hidden in the various environments; these give you a little extra help in a puzzle if you need it, much like any Layton game". All the puzzles are related to mathematics. While solving each individual puzzle helps the player to unravel the larger mystery, "the experience points and levelling system are completely arbitrary". Nintendo Life compared the game mechanics to the games featuring Professor Layton.