Secret Paths to Your Dreams

Reviewed by Anise Hollingshead
Published by Purple Moon/Mattel Media

Age Group: Age 8 and Up
Type: Art/Creativity, More Fun
Price:

Description:

The Whistling Pine crew invites you to join them in exploring their dreams. Design your own dream backgrounds or recreate theirs, using a variety of animated stamps, settings and sounds. If you faithfully render their dreams, they will give you a secret bonus stamp, one for each of the five girls. An accompanying journal can be used to write down your dreams, thoughts and ideas, also.

Features:

  • Whistling Pine characters
  • Art area
  • Journal section
  • Options of music and sound effects
  • Dream dictionary for traditional dream symbols
  • Print options
  • Password is optional, but no parental bypass is included

Technical Aspects:

Installation was a breeze, and there were no glitches in the program. The graphics were nice to look at, and the animated stamps were well-done.

Report and Conclusions:

Basically, this is a rather limited art/writing program. While the animated stamps are fun, and the idea of drawing pictures to accompany dreams (stories) is a good idea, this idea has actually been done much more successfully in the program Orly's Draw-a-Story, which featured four stories that could be illustrated with lots and lots of art tools, and then played back in an animated cartoon style while the story was enacted. To Your Dreams has no paint tools, and no free drawing area, such as Orly had.

While admittedly the word processing tools in Orly weren't that great, the wonderful painting tools, plus the charm and humor of the stories, more than made up for it. The writing area in To Your Dreams dream journal has no word processing tools to speak of, it's just your basic typing.

Our children here are big Purple Moon fans, and have most of their programs, the most popular being the Rockett games. However, this program is not destined to become a favorite. While the activity of recreating the girls' dreams is somewhat intriguing, once you've figured them out, you're done. I cannot recommend this program, even to fans of the series, due to its extremely narrow focus and lack of replayability. Parents are better off looking for a more versatile journal or art/creativity program.




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