Pingu and Friends (UK Version)

Description:

Pingu and Friends is a collection of ten activities for children to play, with a range of inside and outside games. The game supports Reception Years 3-5 and National Curriculum Key Stage 1, so parents can rest assured that the game is not only fun, but educational as well. The booklet also explains what each activity teaches children, for example, Tell Me A Story "can help children strengthen their knowledge of the link between objects, written words and sound words. This will help to improve a child's literacy and narrative skills."

Features:

• Parcel Fun - Papa has dropped his parcels from his sledge, it's up to Pingu to find and retrieve the packages before it gets dark. Skill levels affect how many parcels have to be found.
• Tell Me A Story - A story is told to the player who then has to put the corresponding pictures in the correct order. In the hardest level, letters also have to be fitted into important words in the story.
• Count The Cakes - Mama has baked some cakes for Pingu and his friends. You have to count how many are available for each friend.
• Flying Pancakes - Pingu has rigged up a contraption to get the pancakes, which are out of his reach.
• Snowball Fun - Pingu has to stop his friends from covering him in snow by throwing snowballs at them first. But if he hits Mama or the washing, he'll be in trouble!
• Snowbowl Alley - A game of bowls with snowmen for pins and a penguin for the ball. The skill level changes the amount of pins to knock down.
• Save Pinga - Pingu has to rescue Pinga from an ice shelf by collecting balloons. I found this game very difficult, perhaps too much so for the ages the game is aimed at.
• Pingu Pairs - Pingu and his friends are hiding in snowholes. It's up to you to find the matching pairs.
• Ping's Art Igloo - Pingu has a collection of drawings for you to colour in and print out. You can also draw and create your own pictures or play join the dots.
• Ice Dancing Arena - All the characters take part in a dancing display with Pingu. You have to make up the dances put of a series of steps. The dance can be recorded and played back to music.

Technical Aspects:

The game requires Windows 95/98 and a minimum of P90 with 16mb RAM. It can also be run on an iMac. To get the most out of the game (and in order to understand the activities), you will need a Sound Blaster 16 (or 100% compatible) and speakers or headphones. I had no trouble with the installation and fond no bugs or problems with the game at all.

There is a screen to interact with before the main game starts. This requires you to click on one of the characters in the game who will then make a noise. This helps to make sure that children understand the cursor (which is represented by a mitten) and to make sure that they understand how to click on interactive elements to the game.

The narration is excellent, as are the sounds in general, clear and understandable. The one problem is that, as the buttons speak, if they speak when the narrator is explaining the game, then it does get confusing, especially as the explanation is only given once. This is where I found the help file to be excellent, providing clear, concise information.

Report and Conclusions:

There are 10 games to play, four of which are located inside the igloo and six outside. The two main areas are represented by a picture, which includes objects that can be interacted with, for example, in the igloo, the Flying Pancakes activity is accessed by clicking on the frying pan. The objects on the screen which lead to the activities make themselves known to the player in two ways, firstly, when passed over the object, the mitten (mouse) waves, secondly, the object on screen will move, for example, the balloons outside fly up to the sky, with Baby Pinga attached to the bottom of them, and the cakes inside fly from one plate to another.

To move from inside to outside, or vice versa, you can either click on the door to the igloo (as seen from inside, in order to go out, or outside in order to go in) or you can make use of the menu buttons which remain at the bottom of the screen for the entirety of the game. This I found very useful indeed. If you want to leave any game, access the help menu, change to inside or outside or change the skill level (all games have a skill level of 1 to 3), it's all there. The buttons even talk as you pass the mitten over them, so children can easily recognise which button is which.

All in all, a fun and interesting collection of activities, featuring a children's favourite, which should make it popular. The activities could have been joined in a better way than the pictures, but that's a minor complaint.