Gary Gadget: Building Cars
© 2006 Viva Media
First released in German in 1998 as "Building Cars with Willy Werkel" this CD-based game lets children build a vehicle which they can drive and customize to perform specific tasks by combining various parts from a junkyard. While the concept is good, and the watercolor-like illustrations are beautiful — almost as if they were taken right out of a children's book — the design feels clunky which lowers the rating. You start by choosing traditional car parts from a junkyard, where you'll find bumpers, batteries, engines, and tires; as well as nontraditional parts like the nose of an airplane or the basket to a hot-air balloon. By clicking on the camera, you can photograph your creation and add it to an album, that you can later view by clicking on the book in the bookshelf. If your car is incomplete, you have to go back to the drawing board to add the missing item. For example, if you don't put a steering wheel in, your vehicle crashes and you have to return to the junkyard to fix it. Not only do children have to add the all the correct parts, they also have to be sequenced correctly in order for the car to work. For example, if you try to put a part on out-of-sequence, such as the seats after the body of the car, the part just drops back down into the parts pile. You then have to click and drag the body off, place the seats on the chassis, and replace the body. Once your vehicle is complete, you can drive it to be judged at the car show or use it to complete missions. Missions are received via "mail" or by picking up the ringing phone in the shop. For example, you might receive an invitation to Malcolm Manners' home for a party, but when you arrive they are out of juice, so you have to go to the juice factory for more. There are also obstacles in the road that you will need the right car parts to overcome. If there are cows blocking the way, for example, you'll need a horn to scare them away; likewise, if there is mud, you'll need tires with special tread. We liked the idea of being able to customize the car in zany ways and the necessity of using real car parts to make it drivable. However, driving the car wasn't smooth — no matter if you used the mouse or the directional arrows — and the map provided only had tiny signs that might not be obvious to young children. Also, the sound effects and speech are repetitive. For example, no matter what car you bring to the car show, the judge says the same thing; the only difference being the number on the sign he holds up. Additionally, when trying to equip the car with the horn necessary to scare the cows, it would only stick to the roof which didn't make sense. We thought the concept here was good, but the sound effects and speech should have been more varied, and the driving and map graphics should have been more child-friendly.
$30, Windows XP, Mac OSX
Teaches: problem solving, logic, taking things apart
CTR Rating: 70%