A game about robots teaches you how to program in JavaScript

Kuato Studio, which is based in London and Palo Alto and consists of an impressive team including specialists from SRI (who developed Siri for the iPhone) and game designers from Sony Playstation, Idea Works, Blitz, Konami and other famous companies, presented a game called Hakitzu . Instead of using a touchpad or other controllers, the player will have to type on the command line to tell the robot what to do: go forward, turn around, etc. While the user is playing, without realizing it, he is learning Javascript code.

Frank Meehan, founder of Kuato, said that they had talked to many parents and their children and realized that most current curriculum gets boring after ten minutes. “If it’s not funny, there’s just no point in it,” he said. “We wanted to create the first real game for mobile platforms that teaches programming.” The development team's ambitions don't stop there. Kuato is busy creating an AI-powered virtual tutor that can be used to teach anything a user wants to know in any field.

Hakitzu is available for iPad and iPad Mini now on the iTunes Store .