Pick of the month
Guardians Of Ancora
Scripture Union (4 stars)
Guardians of Ancora is a free game for tablets and smartphones made by Scripture Union. You play as a ‘Guardian’: a kid who has to find stories from the Bible to light up the city of Ancora where they live. First of all you enter the time of Jesus. You have to travel around an old town, climbing ladders, sliding down ropes and jumping between boats, searching for Jesus. When you find him the animated story starts to takes place. Then you have to continue on in the game to find out what happens next. You also need to collect hidden sheep to increase your score. Once you’ve completed a level you go back to the city of Ancora. There you can do Bible quizzes, listen to scripture verses and watch videos to gain more firebugs (which act as points) as well as designing your character and even taking part in a personality test to see which of the fishermen you are most like. The more firebugs you collect, the more levels you can access (called ‘ranking up’), enabling you to open up new buildings in Ancora and will be able to interact with and help different characters. The need to keep ‘ranking up’ means you often end up taking the same quiz more than once. As you progress you can do even more things in the story levels, such as moving boulders and leaping across the top of market stalls. The game really helped me experience what it felt like to live in the time of Jesus and the adventure side of it is fun. All the leaping about is like ‘parkour’, or free running. It’s a bit crazy that one kid can jump super high and do flips, but it looks really cool. Would my friends who don’t go to church enjoy it? The gameplay is fun and the animation is really good, but they might find the quizzes a bit hard if they don’t know much about the Bible. However, playing through the levels helps you answer the questions. The first level is a bit tricky, but once you get the hang of the controls it gets easier. The only downside is there aren’t that many levels so it didn’t take me long to reach the final one (number four), though the game’s makers say that more levels are going to be added soon. It would also be cool if there was a multiplayer option. I learned loads about the Bible by playing Guardians of Ancora. It’s also free, which is pretty amazing, and there are no annoying in-app purchases. I think it’s a great game for both Christian and non-Christian kids to learn all about the Bible.
Noah Brierley is ten years old.
