Kinect Adventures! is a sports video game released by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360. Released in 2010, it is a collection of five adventure and sports minigames and was developed by Good Science Studio, a subsidiary of Microsoft Game Studios. The game utilizes the Kinect motion camera and was offered as a pack-in game with the accessory. It was unveiled at the 2010 Electronic Entertainment Expo and went on to become the best-selling game on the Xbox 360 as well as earning a place within the top 50 best-selling games of all time, selling 24 million units worldwide.

Gameplay

Kinect Adventures! uses full body motion to allow the player to engage in a variety of minigames, all of which feature jump-in, jump-out multiplayer play. Each minigame lasts about three minutes. While most of the minigames are co-operative in two player mode, Reflex Ridge is a competitive game. The game also supports Xbox Live multiplayer. At many points during the game, Kinect's RGB camera would take photos, which were shown to the player(s) and saved to a storage device. These could then be viewed within the game, with the option of uploading these to a private repository on the now defunct KinectShare.com and downloaded to a computer or uploaded to social networking sites. The object of all the minigames is to get the highest number of adventure pins, which are collected in different ways. Adventure pins earn the player(s) medals which, in story mode, affect progression. Medals can be bronze, silver, gold and platinum, in order from least to most pins needed to acquire each. As a pack-in game, Kinect Adventures! also contains features which aid users in proper set-up and use of the Kinect sensor.

Game types

Release

Pre-order Kinect bundles included a card with codes redeemable for two exclusive levels of Rallyball and one exclusive level of Reflex Ridge, as well as a helicopter prop for use with an Xbox Live Avatar.

Reception

Kinect Adventures! received "mixed" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. Video game talk show Good Game's two presenters gave the game 6.5 and 6 out of 10, saying that it's a good demonstration of what the Kinect is capable of but lamented that there weren't more mini-games in the game, also stating that only 2 of the 5 mini-games were worth playing. In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of three sevens and one nine for a total of 30 out of 40. Being a pack-in game for Kinect, Kinect Adventures! has sold 24 million copies worldwide, making it the bestselling game for the Xbox 360.