Maths on a Fun Track

From The Sunday Mail, South Australia, 5th August 2001

Two years ago, a squad of game developers teamed up with educators and primary school kids on a edutainment project.

Now get ready to eVac-U8! Fun-Ed, a division of Lizard Edutainment Pty Ltd, is launching eVac-U8! From Windy Towers for the PC.

When exploring one night while on a sleep over at Aunt Dimensia's house, you discover a most intriguing machine called eVac-U8. Before you realise eVac-U8 is allergic to you, it sneezes, exploding into 20 pieces, sucking you into a parallel world and shrinking you down to a size smaller than your toys. The only way to get back to normal is to collect all 20 pieces of eVac-U8 that are now strewn through Aunt Dimensia's house.

This is just the beginning of a journey full of surprises - more like a Paul Jennings novel than an educational tool. There are out-of-this world characters ready to help you complete the tasks and deal with the unexpected.

Zany characters like Aunt Dimensia, two-headed Elbie-Arbie, a sneezy spaceship allergic to inquisitive visitors, along with Gazza the hit-headed dragon, are some of the odd-ball beings youngsters meet on the way.

The game lets users print their own 3D eVac-U8 and build as they discover each new piece. Lots of new friends offer tips and help you to be bold and brave as you work your way through Windy Towers.

There are amore than 20 games incorporating maths skills, such as fractions, geometry, representing and interpreting data, problem solving, multiplication and division, estimation, addition and subtraction, symmetry, scale and lots more.

Designed to have the kids screaming for mercy as they laugh their way through the maths curriculum, it's designed for children aged seven and over. EVac-U8 is in stores this month.