The Fun Way to Learn Math and Test Your Skills

Ever since their appearance, somewhere in the 1980s, video games gained a solid and ever-growing support from the young. But that is not all. Year after year, they began growing in importance and nowadays they constitute a whole, constantly flourishing industry. And a profitable one too. There are many free titles at the moment, and some of them are sure to have a big positive impact on children. Tux, of Math Command is one of these games that put the importance of the cultural wealth before financial issues.

The Looks

Tux, of Math Command has a simple and easy-to-use interface, with the main menu composed of animated buttons, so when you hover your mouse over them you may get a nice surprise. Also important here is the fact that kids will enjoy the graphics and the animation in and outside the game.

The Works

Tux, of Math Command is a free educational game that places you in the shoes of the well-known Linux penguin to save some other penguin houses from being destroyed by comets. The main menu of Tux is very well organized, because you can switch between the options easily. For example, if you are in the options panel and want to get to the menu, besides “ Back” there is also a red “X” button to the right that will let you do the same thing. This button works in-game also; if you get bored, you can easily exit anytime you want.

The main menu features six different buttons that will allow you to start a new game, customize the game options and perform a number of other tasks. The first button will help you start a single campaign that consists of the tutorial, named here the “Math Command Training Academy,” the “Math Command Fleet Missions,” which are the main campaigns of the game, and also two more sandbox titles. Here you can choose to play an arcade game that only ends when you give the correct answer to all the math questions coming down from the top of the screen.

If you choose to play a custom game, you should know that it’s not so different from the arcade mode, except that here you have access to some more options. However, in order to access them you have to exit and edit the options file in the main directory of the game.

From the main menu you can also “play with friends.” Basically, this is the multiplayer option of Tux, of Math Command. A player must first decide how difficult the game should be, and then choose from the two game modes, score sweep or elimination. While the former is concentrated on having the highest score and the end of the gaming session, the latter is mainly focused on the penguins and how many will remain in the end.

After choosing one of the two game modes, two up to four players can enjoy a fun and not-so-difficult adventure. Tux, of Math Command has the same fun pattern from the beginning until the end of the gaming session, making you want more every time.

If you mastered the single Campaign, then you have to move on. This means you should go to the Factoroids! game mode, which raises the difficulty bar, mainly because it consist of fractions and factors, and you also have to pilot your own space ship and destroy the asteroids that are in your way.

If you need even more information on Tux, of Math Command, you can go to the Help panel, to learn everything about it in a real-time game session. After that you can also go to the options panel, where you can see a demo of the game – which also includes the basic game mechanics – as well as the project’s info and credits.

Tux, of Math Command has a history of nine years of development, which might mean that it has very few bugs. Clearly, I haven’t met one the whole time I spent with the game. Since 2001, it has evolved from an early build to a beautiful well-animated educational math game.

The Good

The Truth