Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends: Scavenger Hunt
© 2006 The American Game Factory, Inc.
Easy to play, with lots to do, Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends contains nine games, with three levels each. While some of the design features could be improved, the overall experience makes it a viable addition to your software library. In the story mode, children help one of Miss Spider's children find a list of items hidden in the woods. The found items are kept in a notebook. Because the program doesn't keep track of the items that have been found, it is hard to remember what you're looking for; a rather irritating design problem. As they explore, children can play games where they find letters, put colors in order, match musical sounds and so on. After four scavenger hunts have been found, the last activity is unlocked. The game can remember up to four different players, and each one can save up to eight games. There is also a mode enabling children to directly jump into the activities. The graphics do a nice job of letting children see the things from a bug's perspective. We liked how the characters provide hints when needed (i.e. how to find the paddles needed for a boat ride).However, we didn't like how the program handles wrong answers. For example, in the sequencing game, children are told how many mistakes they made, but are never shown what they did wrong. This game could be a bit smarter. Our four-year-old tester started to play the game by himself, finding it easy to move around, but hard to remember what to collect. As he was playing, family members came in to the room and were drawn in to the game. Before long, the activities became a family game, and it was great to see everyone playing and talking together.
$19.99, Windows XP, Windows 98, Mac OSX
Teaches: logic, classification, seriation, memory
CTR Rating: 80%