Parents' Guide to

Hungry Red Planet

By Jinny Gudmundsen, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 9+

Terrific software for home as well as school.

Game Windows 2003
Hungry Red Planet Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this game.

Community Reviews

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age 8+

Based on 1 parent review

Amber H.
Amber H. Adult
February 8, 2017
age 8+

Was one of the kids who played the original as a beta tester!

My goodness, I don't know why I looked this up again after all these years, I simply adored this game! I used to live in Beltsville, Maryland and while I did the developer came to my town and I was one of the lucky test group that got to play this game raw! From what I remember about it, this game was pretty darn good thought the lesson the game taught took a back seat to my gamer mentality I spent many long hours into the night playing on the game even long after I'd been told to go to bed.

This title has:

Great messages
Great role models
Easy to play/use
See all 1 parent review

What’s It About?

HUNGRY RED PLANET is an innovative computer simulation produced by Health Media Lab under a grant from the National Institutes for Health. The game sends children on a space mission to colonize Mars. Their goal is to colonize Mars by establishing healthy, food-producing settlements. To keep the settlers healthy, and thus able to work at their potential, the players must provide healthy menus for the settlements.

To succeed, kids will learn how to interpret FDA Nutrition Facts labels found on the 300 real foods available for menu planning, and to conform their menus to the Department of Agriculture's Food Guide Pyramid and Healthy Eating Index. Players must also plan food production and allocate resources to expand their settlements. Kids will wrestle with food shortages, viruses, and unusual occurrences. If they keep the settlers healthy and produce enough food, they win.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: (1):
Kids say: Not yet rated

If you have children who think soda is a healthy breakfast, give them this game and you may find them reaching for the orange juice instead. This clearly educational simulation impressed our kid-testers because it was so much fun. They confessed to learning a tremendous amount about nutrition. Featuring excellent tutorials and a Nutrition Reference, Hungry Red Planet is terrific software for the home as well as for schools.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about their own diets. Do you eat healthfully? How could you improve your diet? What role does the media play in teaching both good habits and influencing the things that we want to eat?

Game Details

  • Platform: Windows
  • Available online?: Not available online
  • Publisher: Health Media Lab
  • Release date: July 21, 2003
  • Genre: Educational
  • ESRB rating: NR
  • Last updated: November 4, 2015

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