Emerald Island

What’s the Story?

EMERALD ISLAND (www.EmeraldIsland.com) is a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) where kids enter the game as an animal avatar that they design. Tasked with fighting off eco-destroying rodents known as PiRats, kids go on a series of quests to save this world from pollution, deforestation, and other ecological disasters. Upon entering this world, kids are provided with a home and land on which to plant a garden. This world is populated with other kid players as well as non-player characters who act as your guides throughout the world. As with most virtual worlds, you can change the look of your avatar, safely chat if parents approve, and decorate your crib. But the focus of this game is completing eco-themed quests and planting a garden to raise crops for sale and to keep the habitat "green."

Is It Any Good?

Emerald Island is a fun world to explore. Many MMOs can be confusing for kids, but Emerald Island eases this discomfort by providing cute, in-game movies that explain the game play and stationing many characters within the game whose sole purpose is to help you play. By exploring the minigames scattered throughout the world, growing vegetables to sell, and doing quests, kids earn coins to buy things in this virtual world which can include furniture for their home, and land in which to grow a bigger garden.

Most quests have an ecology message, and the economy within the game requires you to plant a garden, so kids will learn about ecological issues and how to grow different kinds of plants by playing the game. During the weeks surrounding Earth Day (April 22), in-game actions of planting trees results in real world actions of tree planting by Trees For The Future, so kids can do good in the real world by playing this game. While still a little buggy, this is an MMO that kids ages 6-12 will enjoy.