MagNext Virtual: A Safe, Fun, Family-Friendly MMORPG

For what is essentially a flash game, MagNext Virtual is a pretty amazing concept. It’s a family-friendly game where a player is represented by a small virtual ball (that you can customize, but more on that later). You move the ball around the space with your mouse, and you can visit the virtual shop, or go to the arena, or play games, or hang out in rooms where you can interact with other players.

You earn “mags,” the monetary unit of MagNext Virtual, by playing games and competing and hanging out in the rooms and interacting. They award “mags” for uploading pictures and just about anything else you can imagine doing on the site. The cheapest customization I found was a 10-mag paint job, and unfortunately, I had started out with a 0-mag wallet. So, time to go play a game (click the picture for larger image).

In this particular game, my metallic sphere attached to a racecar-like vehicle, and was launched from the launcher seen in the picture. You pick your starting speed by making a well-timed press of the spacebar when the meter shows full power. This took me a few tries, I have terrible timing.

Once launched, some backwards facing arrows representing decelerators and obstacles slow your vehicle down. If you come to a complete stop, your round is over. Pressing “space” launches the “speed boost,” which you can use in a pinch if you run out of your speed meter. Forward-facing yellow arrows can be used (just run over them) to get a quick speed boost. Along the way are small golden pick-up items that give you speed boosts back like the three you start with.

The cool thing about this game is it can teach kids vaguely how speed and inertia and acceleration and deceleration work. Physics! I’m not sure what MagNext is on to, but they could very well be using edutainment to raise tomorrow’s NASA engineers!