I SPY Mystery
© 2006 Scholastic
The "greatest hits" of the I SPY software series, I SPY Mystery consists of 56 riddles, many recycled from previous releases. Fun to play alone or with a group, this is an excellent exercise in visual discrimination and is one of the very few software titles that uses poems, double word meanings, puns and other rich, playful uses of language. The riddles are organized into 13 mysteries, that can be selected from the main menu. Each case requires carefully scrutinizing four or five of the riddles in search of tiny but important clues that are listed on the bottom of the screen in the context of a poem. One of the clues is common for the mystery. For example, in "Old Thunder," players search for a lightning strike, embedded in nautical-related scenes. When all the lightning strikes are found, the riddle is solved, and an animation is shown (the ship sinks). Other cases include the Mystery of the Knight Fall, the Locked Gate, Midnight Mouse and Skeleton's Books. Common themes are science, art and spooky places. New riddle screens include the Sand Castle Exterior, Pirate Pete’s Treasure, Dungeon Gate and Machine Diagram. Because you sign in at the start, some of the scenes include your name; a nice way to personalize the experience and save progress over time. The only drawback, besides the addictive quality to the puzzles, is that when you get stuck, you can become frustrated. The best solution is to get somebody else to help search, increasing the collaborative play value of this title. Our testers also lost interest after they found all the riddles and wanted a larger conclusive "final act" that tied all the mysteries together. If you buy just one I SPY software title, make it this one.
$20, Windows XP, Mac OSX
Teaches: language, reading, logic, visual discrimination
CTR Rating: 96%