Explore an entire virtual world and community in this National Geographic game.

Create your own personalized avatar from over 10 animals to choose from.

Play mini games, attend parties and do many other stuffs.

Taking education to the next level, National Geographic Kids has partnered with game developers and came up with an amazing, kid-friendly virtual world based entirely on animals! This virtual world is Animal Jam, which everyone, including people who are kids at heart, can play for free!

At the start of your journey in this virtual world, you’ll be asked to create an avatar. You can choose from various animals to create the basic look of your avatar with. Later on, you’ll be asked to customize your avatar further. You have all the freedom to be totally creative with your avatar’s look at this point: you can create a blue-eyed, yellow-and-gray striped tiger, a species that does not actually exist in real life.

From the onset, you can tell that this game is geared specifically for children. Kids are totally imaginative, but adults can be as well, which is why this game is great for all ages. Children and parents should bond easily playing this game – there are games and quizzes in the world that would require a combined effort between parent and child, presenting a great opportunity for kids and their elders to spend some time together.

Playing games is the main attraction here in Animal Jam. There are clubs that let you play mini-games when you step into them. You can tell if there’s a mini-game available for you to play because a console controller icon appears. Take note of the icon colors – blue means it’s free to play for everyone, while green means the game is restricted to members of specific groups within the virtual world.

You’ll be amazed at the sheer number of mini-games that are available for you to play. One of these is Phantom Fighter, a vertical scrolling 2D game that’s visibly inspired by space fighter games of the 1980s. There is also the intuitive Spider Zapper – all you have to do is to “zap” black spiders by pointing a web cursor over them and pressing the left mouse button. Of course, there are those educational games that let you and your children answer trivia.

Games are a sub-world of their world here in this virtual world. They reward players with in-game currency, called “Gems.”

You can also attend parties, or events in which you and other players of the virtual world, called “Jammers,” can compete in attempting to achieve the goals of each party. There is also a huge number of parties to attend and participate in: other Jammers even create their own parties to invite other Jammers to.

Last but not the least, you can decorate your own hideout, called a “Den” in the game’s parlance. You can also invite other Jammers into your Den and host parties.

Animal Jam is one of those virtual worlds that you should definitely check out. All you need is a valid e-mail address or, if you’re a minor, your parents’ email address.