An Educational Game Carmen Sandiego Will Meet Players In 2025 Soon

In the field of educational games, Carmen Sandiego series is a benchmark. The original computer game “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” was released in 1985, and since then, the series has produced dozens of sequels and spin-offs. In 2025, the series will launch its first new game in 10 years, and its name is very simple: Carmen Sandieg.

This game will soon appear on the shelves of major stores, or more accurately, the shelves of public libraries. Not only because of its gameplay but also because it is a very educational game. In an era when the game market is full of shoddy and overly exciting children’s games, this game is a refreshing change. In addition, Carmen Sandieg seems to be an excellent introduction to video games, allowing children to learn how to play various video games quickly.

Carmen Sandieg

The original idea of the game Carmen Sandieg began in 1983, when programmer Dane Bigham proposed to develop a text adventure game. In the end, the project was completed by artists Gene Portwood and Lauren Elliott. The original idea was to let players chase and arrest various scammers. Later, Broderbund co-founder Gary Carlston suggested expanding the focus of the game to introduce various geographical locations, allowing players to find the scammers’ hiding places through various clues. Carmen Sandieg series inherited this idea.

In the original design, Carmen Sandieg was one of the villains. Later, the staff liked the mysterious female name Carmen Sandieg, and they also hoped that this game could attract some female players, so Carmen Sandieg stood out from the villains.

In the first generation design, Carmen Sandieg was a criminal who was fleeing all over the world, and the player needed to chase her footsteps and catch her. Later, in Netflix animated series from 2019 to 2021, Carmen Sandieg’s identity has undergone a great transformation. She is no longer a criminal, but a heroine. She betrayed the evil organization that trained her since childhood and began to thwart their conspiracy. It is in this context that the new generation of Carmen Sandieg has officially become the protagonist that players can operate.

Gameplay

In this new puzzle adventure game, Carmen Santiago is a spy who needs to solve puzzles one by one to fight against the evil theft gang called VILE. Players will play Carmen and travel around the world to collect clues about suspects, hunt down agents of International Evil League, and finally issue an arrest warrant to arrest the main criminal.

Educational elements are cleverly integrated into the game mechanism. During the game, you will involuntarily learn about various countries. For example, a witness who sees a thief may tell you some information, such as the thief said that he wanted to study Mayan ruins and that the thief has red hair. You can decide the next destination based on the first clue. In this case, the next destination is Mexico City. Information about the thief himself can help you narrow down the suspects.

The learning process is not about memorizing knowledge points. Carmen Sandieg’s game design encourages players to pay attention to various information and absorb all kinds of knowledge. There will always be some children or players who want to skip all the dialogue and text and focus only on the interactive game mechanics. But in this game, if you don’t read the information, the task will fail quickly, which encourages players to absorb knowledge and make wise choices. At the same time, the game is still interspersed with many interesting game mechanics.

Through this design, Carmen Sandieg can also successfully teach players how to play various types of video games: in one small game, you have to control Carmen from a first-person perspective, and in the next link, you will play a puzzle game that requires untangling tangled wires. You also need to do some simple math problems to calculate how much time you have left to solve the case if you need to take a flight and spend 10 hours flying to the other side of the earth. You will repeatedly consider in front of the computer, entangled in whether to chase the suspected thief or steal what you need directly from the suspect.

Advantage

This game is not particularly easy, and since there is no voice reading function, it may only be suitable for children with strong reading ability or who can play with adults.

Some of its features make this game very suitable for use in the classroom. Teachers can help students search for clues online, such as In which country is Nara Park located? And explain some difficult vocabulary.

From the content of the trial, Carmen Sandieg should be a nearly perfect new member of the series. More importantly, it is a nearly perfect game for children who like knowledge. This game does not overly beautify history and reality, nor is it a reduced version of the original Carmen Thief - in short, it is not overly childish and does not deliberately cater to the youngest players, but maybe they will still like it very much.

This is a very authentic Carmen Sandieg game, which means that it can provide pure fun and can also be entertaining and educational in a subtle way. If you are a parent with children, then you can try to let your children acquire knowledge and think actively in a more relaxed and enjoyable way. Carmen Sandieg can perfectly complete this task. Maybe it can become your child’s first RPG puzzle game.