Star Wars: Episode One, The Gungan Frontier (UK Version)

Description:

The Gungans are trying to build a new underwater city, but they have no building materials. It's up to you to develop an ecosystem that can help the Gungans in their task, but make sure that they don't harvest the resources to extinction. Familiar characters such as Jar Jar Binks, R2-D2 and Boss Nass are there to provide advice and assistance.

Features:

• Training Mission - details the key elements for building and maintaining an ecosystem
• Beginner (animals and plants already loaded) and Advanced colonisation (load them yourself)
• Missions - there are 13 missions in total (not counting the training mission), ranging from easy to hard
• Create a Critter

Technical Aspects:

The graphics could be a little blocky at times, especially certain species of plants, which appeared as different blocks of green; the animals were also better in the descriptive area than the actual game, where they looked blocky and featureless. Other aspects of the graphics were great, though. The Gungan city, for example, was detailed and well designed, as was the Kresch (the sacred, wise creature that provides you with information about the creatures and plants that you are dealing with).

Report and Conclusions:

Your first task is to choose your character, either from Obi-Wan Kenobi or Queen Amidala, one of whom is required to assist Jar Jar and R2-D2 on the mission to create and maintain a colony of Gungans on the water moon of Naboo. In order to do this, you have to release animals and plants to create an ecosystem, which the Gungans can then harvest to build up their city. The training mission is vital, it guides you through the various stages of setting up an ecosystem, releasing the animals and plants, and checking the food web and the development of the Gungan City.

Once you've completed the training, it's on to the colonisation. The task is to develop the ecosystem and allow the Gungans to harvest enough of the animals and plants, so they can build their underwater city. At the same time, you have to make sure that the creatures you are introducing flourish so that the Gungans can continue to build and the ecosystem remains stable. Boss Nass is on hand to help you out with advice, but he tends to encourage you to increase the harvest for his people, which often leads to the ecosystem becoming unstable.

The other choice is the Training Mission mode. Here, the mission choices include such titles as "Save the Poms" - where you have to stop the predators eating the plant, by introducing predators for the Pom's predator, and introducing more food for the predators to keep them away from the Poms. There are many different missions, such as "Garden Moon", "Peko Peko Peril" and "Clodhopper Alert". In all of these, the Gungan city is not important and instead, you have to complete the objectives in order to succeed.

I think that The Gungan Frontier is an educational and thought-provoking game. It encourages children to learn about the environment, whilst keeping that in a fun, and popular, setting. Whilst the creatures may be alien, the ecosystem structure isn't: this will help children learn about our own planet.