Played at the Ellingson home when I spent a week with them in Pendleton, OR. A cute, educational math/logic game, AND my very first exposure a party of persistent characters and permadeath. What!? Had an awesome mechanic where you could finish a screen with a subpar solution and leave some of your party behind, but at some point you had too few zoombinis to finish a puzzle. Then you could go back and start a new party and when you caught up with your first party they'd still be where you left them, and you could merge the parties together. How hardcore is that? I've been waiting for a game to do something similar ever since.

There was a Kickstarter to remaster this (just as “Zoombinis”), and there's lots of info out there now. I replayed this on Android in September 2022, because I played very little of it as a kid and was wondering how my memory of it held up. Pretty accurately, to be honest! And I think some of the puzzles hold up too - I appreciate the emphasis on experimentation, the directions are usually just “Try things and observe” with some reassurance that setbacks are temporary. My replay doubled down on my desire to reuse some of these mechanics in a game.