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Chocolate Castle: First Look

Susie Ochs — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 18:11:23 -0500

Lexaloffle, a developer out of New Zealand, has introduced Chocolate Castle, a casual game chock full of fun and challenging puzzles.

Each puzzle board is a grid that contains chocolate blocks in any of four colors, pink, light brown, dark brown, and white. The board also has tiny bears, in the same colors as the chocolate. Your goal is to clear the boards by having the bears eat the chocolate that's the same color as they are. When you drag the pink bear over a pink block, for example, it devours that block and any other pink chocolate blocks that are adjacent to them. And then the bear disappears, too.

That means that you have to try to connect the chocolate blocks into bigger pieces of one color, so the same-colored bear can eat them all at once. But once you stick chocolate blocks of the same color together, you can't unstick them. As the puzzles get more difficult, walls, magic bricks, snakes, and other obstacles can get in the way. But the interface always lets you pause to see the instructions again (in case you can't remember what a specific special block does), and thankfully, you can skip over any puzzles that are too difficult. Which I had to do with puzzle No. 3. (OK, OK, and No. 4.)

I have no idea what to do in this puzzle (Room 15 in the Hard section). Luckily, the game lets you play the puzzles in any order. Because extreme frustration just...isn't fun.

You can play in fullscreen mode or in a smaller window. Alt-Tab doesn't work in fullscreen, so if you want to polish off a puzzle or two while you're still quote-unquote working in other windows, choose to play in a window (found under Options). Playing in fullscreen mode also caused my Desktop icons to jump around to new places on my screen. This game's graphics, music, and sound effects won't blow you away, but they still exude a retro charm reminiscent of 8-bit NES games.

The full game has 120 total puzzles, divided into Easy, Medium, and Hard sets. The games are untimed, but keep track of how many moves it takes you to clear the board. If you get sick of the 120 included puzzles (which would take quite a while, as some of them are tough), there's also an easy-to-use puzzle editor for making your own. And you can even upload your puzzles to Lexaloffle's online bulletin board, as well as download other players' creations. So this is really the game that keeps on giving, especially for its asking price of $19.95. (A free demo version has 12 puzzles and lets you try the editor.)

Finished all 120 puzzles in the game? (Well, aren't you special...) Head over to the BBS to download puzzles other fans have made, or to offer some friendly help to players who are stuck on one board or another.

Chocolate Castle requires Mac OS 10.2 or later, and can be downloaded from lexaloffe.com for $19.95.

See a full walkthrough of one puzzle after the jump...

A snake, oh noes!

This is Easy puzzle No. 34. Since there's only one bear, he's got to eat all the chocolate at once, which means the block on the bottom right has to be moved over and connected to the chocolate on the bottom left. Since the light brown walls can't move. But that darn snake is in the way...

Sam Jackson sez: "Get that $%^&^ snake in the $#@@% box."

But snakes can move (only forward, not backward), so I'll see if I can get his whole slithery body enclosed in this walled-off box in the middle here.

Every single holiday, a snake in a booooox!

Success! Now I just got to join the chocolate blocks so the bear can eat them all in one chomp.

Here comes that chomp...

The bear and the chocolate disappear all at once. Snakey sez: "Whoa."

I iz teh winnar!!! Awsum!

The Sims Life Stories

Cathy Lu — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 18:02:00 -0500

Like sands through an hourglass, these are the chapters of your Sims' lives.

Sims fanatics finally get a break from the continuous barrage of expansion packs in the form of The Sims Life Stories, a new stand-alone game for the Sims franchise. While the premise is the same as in other Sims games - you micromanage the lives of virtual people by making sure they eat, sleep, shower, and so on - it also features several changes that give new life to an aging premise.

Life Stories has two storylines with tasks that you must complete to progress through the game. The first story is about Riley Harlow, who's entangled in a love triangle with new guy Mickey and high-school flame Dylan. The second story is about successful businessman Vincent Moore, who has to contend with a jealous gold-digging ex and an onslaught of bad dates as he searches for love. These are not Pulitzer-caliber storylines, but there is a compulsion to play through them and find out what happens next. It's kind of like watching a bad soap opera.

To advance, you must complete certain goals that run the gamut from changing your outfit to meeting someone at a community lot (such as a restaurant or a bowling alley). Even after you finish playing the story-based games - they don't take all that long if you stay on task - you can go into Free Play mode and play a slightly scaled down but still fulfilling version of the regular game.

Life Stories plays in a smaller window compared to the full-screen mode used in The Sims, though you can up the resolution and play at full screen. This allows you to keep your email, IM, and browser open and visible so you can get some work done during the game's down time (such as when your Sims are sleeping or at day jobs), though we found ourselves constantly adjusting the camera angle to accommodate the smaller window. And some of the controls take some getting used to. For instance, to scroll left or right, you have to right-click while dragging the mouse. In The Sims, you just drag your cursor to the edge of the screen.

The bottom line. Though the plotlines are a bit corny, it's nice to see a little variety infused into the Sims gameplay. With its friendlier system requirements, The Sims Life Stories is the perfect counterpoint to plugging away on a dull proposal or mind-numbing spreadsheet.

COMPANY: Aspyr
CONTACT: www.aspyr.com
PRICE: $39.95
REQUIREMENTS: G4 or faster or Intel processor; Mac OS 10.3.9 or later; 256MB RAM; 32MB Radeon 9000, GeForce FX 5200, or Intel GMA 950 or later video card; 3GB disk space
New linear storylines. Classic mode provides old-style gameplay. Runs well on older Macs. Universal binary.
Inane plotlines don't offer much depth or challenge. Controls are a bit awkward.

Star Wars: Empire at War

Matt Osborn — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 18:01:31 -0500

Our money's on the big ugly guy.

As a real-time strategy game, Star Wars: Empire at War might remind players of games like Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War. Empire at War's land combat is typical of the genre where units counteract one another (for example, Infantry Platoons are strong against Stormtroopers but weak against Scouttroopers) and finding the right ratio of heavy, light, and specialized units is key to counteracting your opponent. But the game's space battles and Galactic Conquest option set the experience apart.

Battles in space can be epic, with agile Y-wing bombers taking on gigantic Star Destroyers. You'll need to refine your battle tactics to negotiate asteroid fields and skill-sapping nebulae. In Galactic Conquest mode (similar to the game Risk), you control the galaxy, moving your space fleet and land units to conquer planets. When combat begins, you then enter the land or space combat portion of the game with only the forces you have at the planet, so it's best to preplan your strategy.

Empire at War oozes the style of classic Star Wars. The Empire and the Rebellion duke it out in a galactic civil war that takes place during Episode IV: A New Hope. Luke sports an X-wing, and Darth Vader isn't some teenybopper heartthrob. The Empire is all about money and overwhelmingly massive battle forces, while the Rebellion relies on craftiness and skill by stealing technology and slipping small raiding parties past Imperial space fleets to fight planetside. You can purchase heroes such as Boba Fett and Han Solo from the movies, and even Mara Jade from the books, and they're devastating on the battlefield.

If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit.

Unit imbalance in Empire at War is a problem, however. Some units are useless unless fighting those they're designed to counteract. Space battles are two-dimensional, never leaving the same plane. When a land or space battle begins, all structures are already built except defense turrets. This can prevent opponents from building impenetrable fortresses, but it also gives players less freedom. Once you play a few hours of the game you get a sense of the repetition, but the mod community has already created cool, Mac-compatible mods to help balance gameplay - visit cheathappens.com or fileplanet.com to check them out for yourself.

The bottom line. Empire at War adds some interesting ideas to the real-time strategy genre, but the game falls short of being truly great. Experienced RTS players will feel as frustrated as a young Luke Skywalker training with Yoda in a Dagobah swamp. But if you get teary-eyed every time you hear John Williams' score, pick up Empire at War.

COMPANY: Aspyr
CONTACT: www.aspyr.com
PRICE: $49.95
REQUIREMENTS: 1.83GHz or faster Intel processor; Mac OS 10.4.8 or later; 512MB RAM; 3.5GB disk space; 64MB ATI Radeon X1600, nVidia GeForce 7300, or Intel GMA 950 video card; broadband Internet for online play
Oozes classic Star Wars style. Some good gameplay ideas. Jar Jar-free.
For Intel Macs only. Unbalanced units. Repetitive. Lacks tactical freedom.

31 Top Kids' Software Titles

Mac|Life Staff — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 17:01:31 -0500

Veteran software analyst Desmond Loyola (above) - along with Quincy Loyola, Grace Robinson, Lola Robinson, and Ruby Robinson - logged long hours testing children's software for this article.

Summer's here. Your kids are filled with excitement. And you? If you haven't scheduled much for them to do - or even if you have - you're probably looking at hours and hours of time you need to fill to keep them occupied, without turning them into video game junkies or TV zombies. We faced the same dilemma, so we went in search of the top Mac software for kids up to about age 10. (Why not older, you ask? Two reasons: Our in-house group of kid testers tops out at 10, and once kids reach fifth grade or so, they'll probably be ready to use the same Mac apps and games that you do.)

We focused on four areas: educational apps, games, graphics and multimedia, and music. Our kid testers, who range in age from 2 to 10, applied themselves mightily to the task of putting these apps through their paces. We didn't keep them up past their bedtimes, or bribe them with anything we wouldn't let them have anyway. They had so much fun with most of these apps, that was reward enough.

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GAMES: Time to Play

For older kids, there's a huge world of Mac games out there. (If you like a game and it's got a rating you're comfortable with, kids 11 and up will probably like it too.) But if you'd rather have your 10-and-under youngsters play games meant for their age group, check out these titles. It's a good thing we introduced the games after the learning apps…it would have been impossible to tear them away from the purely fun stuff.

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Your li'l one's keyboard pounding will reward her with an array of colorful goodies.

Giggles Computer Funtime for Baby

When your baby is having a mashing good time on your Mac, arms and hands flailing away at your keyboard, you might as well have Giggles Computer Funtime for Baby installed. The software reacts to your child's keyboard pounding based on a variety of themes that you select. Parents will find their kids more entertaining than the software, and the kids will like the pictures that fly across the screen. Leveractive offers three different Giggles packages: Shapes, My Animal Friends, and ABC's & 123's.

COMPANY: Leveractive
CONTACT: www.giggles.net
PRICE: $19.99
AGE RANGE: 6 months to 2 years
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.1 or later
Nothing complex, just good ol' fashioned keyboard pounding for babies. Nice graphics. Good variety of "games."
Might be annoying to parents. Not for delicate keyboards.

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Once your kids get the hang of these games, they're well on their way to Halo.

Lua Lua

There's no meandering storyline in Lua Lua: It cuts right to the games. Lua Lua packages seven games with colorful graphics and, shall we say, energetic music - as in, parents will be annoyed by it after 15 minutes. The games involve matching, pattern recognition, and puzzle solving, but Lua Lua doesn't provide any instructions at the beginning of each game, and the feedback for a correct or incorrect move is so subtle that your kid won't know if a move is right or wrong. Once your kids are familiar with its nuances, however, they can play unsupervised, at least until they get bored and want to move on to the next thing.

COMPANY: Phelios
CONTACT: www.phelios.com
PRICE: $19.95
AGE RANGE: 3 to 7
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.2 or later
Good variety of games. Game updates and added games are free. Universal binary.
Lacks tangible feedback. No direction offered at beginning of games. May not hold your kids' attention for long.

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Kids click the letter that the bear says.

Didi & Ditto Kindergarten

Here's a kids' game done right. The artwork and animation are of a quality rarely seen in kids' software, and there's a good mix of fun puzzles that your child can do solo or with your help. Our testers had fun pointing and clicking around the landscape to find a puzzle or trigger amusing skits, jokes, or riddles from a colorful array of characters (though parents may tire of all the pointing and clicking). The inspired puzzles emphasize a variety of skills - your child should be able to recognize letters and numbers to play - but aren't too difficult for kindergartners and some preschoolers.

COMPANY: Kutoka
CONTACT: www.kutoka.com
PRICE: $26.95
AGE RANGE: 4 to 6
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.2 or later
Top-notch graphics and animation. Wide variety of interesting and challenging games. Positive reinforcement builds confidence.
Hunting for the sweet spots to click on to play a game can be frustrating.

More...

GAMES: Time to Play (continued)

The bare minimum? Far from it - here's the bear maximum!

Smart-Bear Adventures

This series is filled with tons of bear-related facts. The software is more of an interactive book than a game, and as you progress through the story, you unlock new features. For example, in Smart-Bear Adventures 1, you get new image stamps for the creativity center every time you read a new section of the story. You have to finish sections in order to uncover new ones, however, so older kids or those with short attention spans may find the linear track unbearable. And in an age of glitzy graphics and sound, Smart-Bear is refreshing in its still-image and single-narrator simplicity.

COMPANY: Leboe & Grice Multimedia
CONTACT: www.smart-bear.com
PRICE: $19.95 to $24.95
AGE RANGE: 4 to 6
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.3 or later
You'll learn a lot about bears. Printable goodies. Universal binary.
Pace is too slow for older kids. Linear storyline discourages random exploration.

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Big Bang Brain Games

They say that people who do crossword puzzles and other brain-teasing games stay mentally alert longer into old age. That's the idea behind Big Bang Brain Games, a collection of five games for kids and adults that are probably more mentally stimulating than, say, Mortal Kombat, but also likely less thrilling. No matter. Kids who are proficient with the mouse and solid readers will enjoy this game suite, as our testers did, particularly because if nothing else, the graphics are on par with Mac casual games meant to appeal to older gamers.

COMPANY: Freeverse
CONTACT: www.freeverse.com
PRICE: $29.95
AGE RANGE: 7 and up
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.3.9 or later
Graphics appeal to adults too. Multiple difficulty levels and game types make it fun for the whole family. Universal binary.
Some games may move too quickly for younger children who are less nimble with the mouse.

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Legos and lightsabers: together at last.

Lego Star Wars

If you grew up a fan of the Star Wars movies, here's your chance to share the sci-fi fun with your child. The characters, spaceships, structures, and other aspects of this game are designed Lego style, giving Lego Star Wars a cartoony feel. Your child needs nimble fingers to control the characters - our testers were a bit confused at first about how to use the buttons to get their character to do anything. But they got it after a few minutes of practice. At that point, it was hard to keep them from playing through all of Episodes I, II, and III of the Star Wars saga.

COMPANY: Aspyr
CONTACT: www.aspyr.com
PRICE: $29.95
AGE RANGE: 7 and up
REQUIREMENTS: 1.2GHz G4 or faster, Mac OS 10.3.8 or later, 512MB RAM, 2GB disk space, DVD drive
Lots of action. Follows the Star Wars saga. Multiplayer mode. Universal binary.
Controls take practice. Some camera angles are awkward.

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GAMES: Also try...

Androkids ($14.95, www.phelios.com) injects juvenile fun into the platform-game genre by using artwork reminiscent of a fourth-grader's drawings on blue-lined binder paper. It's time to save the princess in Captain Bumper ($25, www.macrun.com), a game chock-full o' colorful, fun graphics and lots of action. Ladybugs ($9.95, www.midoritech.com) is a collection of maze games that encourage color-recognition skills, memorization, and problem solving. Ignazio Fun House ($5.99, www.sakuragames.com) is filled with word and math games to teach the basics of letters and numbers.

More...

GRAPHICS & MULTIMEDIA: Painting with Pixels

Imagine how much of a whiz you'd be at editing photos or video if you grew playing with Photoshop or iMovie. Photoshop may be stretching it - especially for kids younger than 10. But there are several very good graphics and multimedia apps for the Mac that can give your wee ones a great foundation in the digital arts.

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An easy-to-use interface makes Kid Pix a winner.

KidPix 2007 Universal Edition

KidPix 2007 does two things at once: It helps your children create works of art while providing tons of entertainment. Junior can use one of thousands of art objects called stickers to make pictures, or he can use the freehand painting and drawing tools. True multimedia whizzes can add background music from an iTunes library, record sounds through a mic, or export animations for viewing on an iPod.

COMPANY: Software MacKiev
CONTACT: www.mackiev.com
PRICE: $39.95
AGE RANGE: 4 and up
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.1.5 or later, 192MB RAM, 170MB disk space
Abundance of art objects. Fun interface. Good iLife '06 integration. Universal binary.
Only one level of undo. Can't import iTunes-purchased music.

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Canvastic

Canvastic offers kids a leg up in future careers as marketers or digital designers, letting them design slideshows and other graphics projects. Our younger testers found the blank canvas baffling, but kids 8 and up got the hang of it quickly. Devoid of novelty "kid features," Canvastic offers serious functionality.

COMPANY: Canvastic
CONTACT: www.canvastic.com
PRICE: $79
AGE RANGE: 4 to 14
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.2.8 or later
Clean interface can be customized for varying skill/age levels. Advanced graphics functionality without a huge learning curve. Universal binary.
Pricey compared to other kid-oriented software.

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Unleash the future Pixar animator in your child.

Cosmic Blobs

The next time your child comes home from the latest 3D animated blockbuster awestruck and inspired, fire up Cosmic Blobs, a 3D modeling application made for kids. Like all good kids' software, the app encourages creativity and doesn't punish experimentation. With a groovy interface that almost makes you want to eat it, our testers had to be threatened with early bedtime before they'd yank themselves away from the screen where they were creating flora and fauna in three lifelike dimensions. At first, you may need to help your kids conceptualize 3D objects and use some of the tools, but once they get the hang of it, good luck getting them to play outside.

COMPANY: SolidWorks
CONTACT: www.cosmicblobs.com
PRICE: $34.99 download, $39.99 CD
AGE RANGE: 7 and up
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.3.9 or later
Makes 3D modeling easy - which isn't that easy to do. Universal binary.
No keyboard shortcuts.

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GRAPHICS & MULTIMEDIA: Also try...

Rare is the free kid-oriented app that's as full-featured and nicely designed as Tux Paint (free download or $6.99 on CD, www.tuxpaint.org), which lets kids 3 and up create their own graphical masterpieces. With Comic Life Deluxe ($29.95, www.freeverse.com), kids 8 and up can blend photos and words in a way that makes storytelling fast, easy, and fun. (If you have a Mac with OS 10.3 or higher, you already have Comic Life.) Photo Kit Junior ($39.95, www.apte.com) is a learning tool disguised as graphics app: A cute green bug guides kids through a variety of activities, such as creating a movie using photos, staging a puppet show, and more. If your grade-school kids are into photography, check out Slide Show ($29.95, www.apimac.com) for sharing photos and videos.

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MUSIC: A Joyful Noise

Music should be part of all kids' lives - even if you know right away they won't grow up to be the next Yo-Yo Ma, Jimi Hendrix, or Kiri Te Kanawa. And yes, that might mean that you have to listen dutifully to their performances. In the meantime, you can help ensure that there will be fewer missed notes at the next family concert with this collection of children's music apps.

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Music Ace Deluxe

Lots of music software for kids trades heavily on the fun factor. Music Ace Deluxe is no different, but underneath the whimsical little conductor avatar is some fairly serious instruction on reading music, musical notation, and the fundamentals of how to make music. Music Ace Deluxe was simple enough for a 5-year-old and easily scalable for our older testers, including us adults. Kids could load it themselves and enjoyed using it.

COMPANY: Harmonic Vision
CONTACT: www.harmonicvision.com
PRICE: $79.95
AGE RANGE: 5 and up
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 9 or OS X
Excellent variety of engaging activities. Challenging for a wide range of music skills.
On the pricey side for what you get.

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Piano Wizard Easy Mode and Premier

The phenomenal Piano Wizard bridges the gap between music, notes, and colors with an interface that will seem familiar to kids. The near-full-size physical keyboard is mirrored by an onscreen keyboard, and as the musical cues move across the screen, kids try to "hit" them in time to one of the many bundled songs. How good is it? Our testers could play the songs they had learned on Piano Wizard on a real piano later that same day - without having to be nagged to do so. Cool.

COMPANY: Allegro Rainbow
CONTACT: www.pianowizard.com
PRICE: $99.95 (Easy Mode with eKeys), $199.95 (Premier with Keystation)
AGE RANGE: 5 and up
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.2.8 or later
A clever, successful way to teach music. Universal binary.
Finding a place to stash the keyboards.

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Your child chooses an avatar and then jumps into the music to compose a song.

Groovy Music Shapes, Groovy Music Jungle

There's nothing down-market about this offering at all except for the price. Using kid-friendly icons and avatars to cover sound, pitch, composition, and more, Groovy Music Shapes and Groovy Music Jungle extend a music curriculum beyond what many kids are likely to get in school. The software is easy to use, and although suggested age range for Groovy Music Jungle tops out at 9, our 10-year-old testers were thoroughly entertained.

COMPANY: Sibelius
CONTACT: www.sibelius.com
PRICE: $69
AGE RANGE: 5 to 7 (Shapes), 7 to 9 (Jungle)
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.2 or later
High-quality music curriculum for the price. The kids liked it too.
Families with multiple kids have to keep track of multiple software titles.

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Teach 'em about loops, then listen to 'em create grooves.

GarageBand 3

For kids who are music savvy and musical, GarageBand is both a blessing and a curse. It allows them to record every single note of all the music they make and, well, that's the curse part, too. Kids younger than 10 can use GarageBand with some parental involvement. After an initial demo from us, our 8- and 10-year-old testers intuited exactly how to rock the party. Could they record, produce, and mix a song suitable for airplay? Probably not. But they wanted to try.

COMPANY: Apple
CONTACT: www.apple.com
PRICE: $79 as part of iLife '06
AGE RANGE: 10 and up
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.3.9 or later
Familiar interface. Comfortably intuitive, despite the many controls. Universal binary.
Kids require adult help, especially at first.

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MUSIC: Also try…

Send 4- to 10-year-olds on an animated trip through music history with Children's Music Journey ($69.95, www.adventus.com). Also from Adventus, Piano Suite Premier ($89.95) provides an interactive tutor to guide young pianists through the learning process and offer instant feedback on their playing. MiDisaurus ($19.95, www.town4kids.com/us_ecom) promises to turn your school-age children into music prodigies - we're not so sure about that, but younger kids will have fun hanging with the musically inclined animated dinosaur. For an intro to music composition for kids 5 and up, check out Morton Subotnik's Making Music ($35, www.creatingmusic.com).

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EDUCATION: Learning Should Be Fun

You don't have to be a teacher to know that different kids learn at different paces and in different ways. Luckily, there's a host of Mac applications that, at the very least, make learning enjoyable while they help your kids grasp new concepts, review material they've already learned, and deepen their knowledge in a range of subjects

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LittleFingers Preschool, Little Fingers Classroom (Volumes 1 to 4)

LittleFingers Preschool is a set of educational games that get kids used to the concept of the Mac as a learning tool. Eschewing a complex backstory or flashy graphics, Preschool is a set of six straightforward games that help kids pick up or practice skills like the alphabet, color and shape recognition, puzzle solving, counting, and matching. Animal characters act as friendly guides. Younger preschoolers (2 to 3) will love the games, but our 4-year-old was over it after 30 minutes. The Classroom series covers a larger gamut and features learning games appropriate to specific age and grade levels, pre-K and kindergarten (Volume 1) through grades 4 and 5 (Volume 4).

COMPANY: LittleFingers
CONTACT: www.littlefingers.com
PRICE: $19.99 each
AGE RANGE: 2 to 4 (Preschool), 3 to 11 (Classroom)
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.1 to 10.4
Fun, no-nonsense learning games for preschoolers and schoolkids.
Older preschoolers may lose interest quickly (Preschool). Software may not run properly on Intel Macs.

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Kids (and grown-ups) will enjoy learning the alphabet the Seuss-ian way.

Dr. Seuss ABC

No childhood is complete without a healthy dose of Dr. Seuss. Digitally inclined kids are in luck, because Software MacKiev has made Seuss-ian tales available for onscreen consumption. Presented as an interactive book, Dr. Seuss ABC guides you through each page of the original story, adding clickable bits that reveal entertaining animations and add new life to the storyline. If your child lacks the fine motor skills for precise mouse movement, you may need to help select items to click. There's also a basic storytelling mode that simple reads the ABC story, and audio files that you can put on your iPod for ABCs on the r-o-a-d.

COMPANY: Software MacKiev
CONTACT: www.mackiev.com
PRICE: $24.95
AGE RANGE: 3 to 6
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.1.5 or later
Great voice narration. Includes audio for your iPod.
Interactive bits require mouse precision that might be beyond a little kid's ability.

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Sammy's Science House introduces kids to the nuances of nature.

Bailey's Book House, Millie's Math House, Sammy's Science House, Trudy's Time & Place House

Edmark's House series introduces young children to reading, math, science, and useful skills like telling time - in a friendly, accessible manner appropriate for the preschool to first-grade set. Bailey's Book House focuses on language development - word and letter recognition, sounds, and so on. Millie's Math House makes learning basic arithmetic fun. Sammy's Science House does an excellent job presenting thoroughly engaging activities while teaching about animals, recycling, nature, the environment, and more. And Trudy's Time & Place House gives kids a foundation in telling time, reading maps, units of measure, and geography. Younger kids will need your help navigating at first.

COMPANY: Edmark
CONTACT: www.learningcompany.com
PRICE: $59.95 each
AGE RANGE: 3 to 7
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.4 or later
Excellent variety of engaging activities. Challenging for a wide range of skills.
Pricey. You'll have to remind your kids that there are other activities to try.

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Destination Reading

This children's application was developed for use in the classroom, but River Deep makes it available to parents as a Web-based subscription. (Parents can also subscribe to all courses in the Destination Math series.) The two Destination Reading courses available via subscription cover readers from preschool to third grade, offering kids a variety of activities to practice and improve reading skills and become familiar with language arts concepts. The interface is friendly enough, but our testers found the navigation a bit fuzzy at times. For example, in some of the modules, it wasn't always clear what to click once the narrative ended.

COMPANY: River Deep
CONTACT: www.learningcompany.com
PRICE: $59.99 per course per year
AGE RANGE: 4 to 8
REQUIREMENTS: Safari or Firefox Web browser, high-speed Internet connection
Web-based program makes it accessible from anywhere. Nice variety of lessons and activities.
Younger readers will need help from parents to navigate through activities.

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Kids can populate their own Science Station diorama with creatures of their choice.

Thinkin' Science

Apparently, science has become a subject that you have to trick kids into caring about. Up against the lure of video games, we can see how that might apply. But Thinkin' Science does a slick job teaching kids stuff about, say, fungi. And physics and weather - and everything else that seems much less glamorous (but is actually more important) than flashy video games. Our testers' personal fave was Animal Tracking, a hands-on module that covers animals and their habitats and habits.

COMPANY: Edmark
CONTACT: www.rmlearning.com
PRICE: $15.95
AGE RANGE: 4 to 8
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 7.5.6 or later, OS X (in Classic mode)
Easy for young kids to set up and use with minimum parental involvement.
Might be kind of basic for older kids.

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EDUCATION: Learning Should Be Fun (continued)

Sure, the Internet knows everything - but this app keeps the skankier portions of that knowledge off-limits to your kids.

2007 World Book

Kids with native curiosity are a perfect match for World Book. The app's clean design makes using it a snap, and it covers a wide range of topics. It's still a more cumbersome than typing Joe Di Maggio into Google - especially since Google forgives common spelling errors. It took our testers four minutes to get to the Joe Di Maggio entry in World Book (with his name correctly). It only took them four seconds with Google (spelling it incorrectly). On the other hand, the World Book doesn't try to cover the entire world, which could seem like a blessing compared to what the kids might find if you set them loose on the Net.

COMPANY: Software MacKiev
CONTACT: www.mackiev.com
PRICE: $49.95
AGE RANGE: 7 and up
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.3.4 or later
Comprehensive. Appropriate for a wide variety of ages. Clean, easy-to-use interface. Universal binary.
Your kids won't ask you anything anymore - wait, maybe that's a good thing?

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Derecha, lista. Izquierdo, listo.

Mia's Language Adventure

There was a time when certain adults might find themselves watching programs like the Teletubbies. For fun - hours and hours and hours of fun. We wouldn't be surprised at all if Mia's Language Adventure didn't spark that kind of devotion, with its hyperreal graphics and Mia the Mouse's valiant efforts to get her young pupils to speak another language, in this case French or Spanish. Our testers were conversant in Spanish and familiar with French, but they were quite entertained by the software's narrative flow, which is saying a lot. Probably "one of the best we've seen," say the kids. ¡Muy bueno!

COMPANY: Kutoka
CONTACT: www.kutoka.com
PRICE: $26.95
AGE RANGE: 6 to 10
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS X
Addictive. Great graphics. Simple and engaging - and simply engaging.
There's not enough room at the Mac for you and the kids.

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Teach your kids to create worlds, and one day they may upgrade the real one.

MicroWorlds EX

Our 8- and 10-year-old testers glommed on to this one right away. They were both amused and entertained by the ability to create wholesale environments out of a wide variety of flora and fauna. The graphics were par for the course for kids' software (read: a bit low-end), but it was almost turnkey in terms of adult involvement and supervision. But we really need to know: What's up with the black turtles?

COMPANY: LCSI
CONTACT: www.microworlds.com
PRICE: $99
AGE RANGE: 8 and up
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.3.9 or later, 512MB RAM
Kid testers enjoyed creating their own worlds.
Average graphics and functionality.

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It's like being in math class, but with twice the math.

The Geometer's Sketchpad

The problem with any kids' math software is the same one you run into with any math class for kids who aren't math prodigies: Making math exciting and nonthreatening is hard to do. And if we're talking about software that's supposed to be chosen voluntarily by your child, when there's no parent or teacher watching, the job is probably even harder. The Geometer's Sketchpad works hard to get around this - and succeeds as much as a piece of software possibly can. But this is clearly not software that kids are going to fire up on their own, so get ready to relearn your geometry as you help your young'uns learn it.

COMPANY: Key Curriculum Press
CONTACT: www.keypress.com
PRICE: $129.95
AGE RANGE: 9 and up
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 8.6 to 9.1, or Mac OS 10.1 or later
The closest thing they've invented yet to a "teacher in a box."
You'll have to force - er, encourage - them to use it.

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This app has been around forever, and for good reason: It's a treat.

The Oregon Trail 5th Edition

There seems to be a thin line between engaging your kids and just giving them something to stare at. The Oregon Trail encourages kids to do stuff - not just sit passively and watch - and it was especially apropos for our 9-year-old tester, who had just visited the Oregon Trail. She found the app easy to set up and quickly got involved in the story as the software actively encouraged her to build maps and participate in other ways. Will your kids pick this up without being prompted? Probably not. But once they do, it will foster problem-solving skills in a way that would make the pioneers proud.

COMPANY: The Learning Company
CONTACT: www.learningcompany.com
PRICE: $19.99
AGE RANGE: 9 and up
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 8.6 to 9.2 and OS X
Keeps kids engaged by encouraging them to interact with the software.
There's only so much excitement to be had in Oregon.

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EDUCATION: Also Try...

If you want to let kids age 4 to 7 "work" on the computer unsupervised without worrying about what they'll get their paws into, Kidwidget ($24, www.astoundit.com) offers a solution: a kid-friendly interface that features a handful of tools including writing, drawing, painting, a piano keyboard, flashcards, a dictionary, and a calculator. Visual learners can beef up skills in language arts, math, social studies, and science with Kidspiration ($69, www.inspiration.com). Help your budding Einstein memorize vocabulary words, math equations, or other important stuff with Genius (free, web.mac.com/jrc/Genius). If your fourth- to eighth-grader professes a love of numbers and stats, nurture that affinity with TinkerPlots ($89.95, www.keypress.com), which helps them build visual representations of mathematical data. Future meteorologists, storm chasers, and pilots will dig 3D Weather Globe & Atlas ($39.95, www.mackiev.com). And World of Where ($15.95, www.acqualia.com) lets your kids - or you - navigate the world.

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BONUS TIPS: 5 Rainy-Day Activities

The next time bad weather or a canceled play-date changes plans, try one of these Mac-based projects.

1. Produce a Stop-Motion Movie

Snap still digital shots of your kids acting out a story, load them onto your Mac and into iPhoto, then launch iMovie HD and start a new project. Click Photos, then uncheck the Ken Burns Effect and slide the hare-and-tortoise slider (clip duration) all the way to the left so the duration field reads 0:03. Select Last Roll from the pop-up menu above the photo browser to display your images, press Command-A to select all, and then drag your pics into the timeline. Click the Play button to see a rough cut of your animation in action.

2. Build Your Own Animal Menagerie
More of a collection of printable graphics than a software app, FORM Wild ($24 each or $100 for all 5 sets, www.formwild.com) lets you and your kids print and create multidimensional animal figures. Once they're printed, cut out, and pieced together, your kids can establish their own personal zoo.

3. Mess Around with Photoshop Filters
If you've ever wasted an hour here and there applying crazy filters and effects to your photos in Adobe Photoshop ($649, www.adobe.com), there's a good chance the activity will provide just as much entertainment for your kids. Just show them where the Filter menu is in Photoshop, open a few images, and let them have at it. Try loading a variety of conversion Actions too. (In the Actions palette, click the tiny right-facing arrow and select Load Actions.) Check out a host of free actions at www.atncentral.com. You'll find free and commercial filters at www.photoshop-filters.com.

4. Goof Off with Photo Booth
There are enough wacky effects in Photo Booth - which requires an iSight camera or other webcam - to amuse kids of all ages (including adults). With Photo Booth open and the camera on, just click the 1 or the 2 button next to Effects and select the one you want before snapping a photo.

Goofing around with Photo Booth's funky filters can fill a few minutes to a few hours, depending on your kids' attention span.

5. Design Your Family Website
iWeb has some frustrating limits for Web pros, but it works well for the rest of us. You can keep your family's site away from the ogling masses by requiring a password: Select your site in iWeb's Site Organize, open the Site Inspector, and click the Password tab. Check the Make My Published Site Private tab and enter a username and password.

FizzBall

Omaha Sternberg — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 17:59:34 -0500

You can't miss in FizzBall, especially in kids' mode.

FizzBall successfully puts new spin on the Breakout style of game, where the object is to eliminate brick walls with a bouncing ball. As Professor Fizzwizzle, you use a fizzball to capture and save cute little animals that have been abandoned on an island. Using a steampunk-style paddle, the professor swats the fizzball at animals, food, and more, but capturing the animals isn't easy -- numerous obstacles block the fizzball's path.

It's up to you to swat your fizzball through the cartoony landscape, breaking barrels, smashing fences, or knocking down animals and fruit from trees. In addition to the animals, you can pick up coins, food, and power-ups that enhance the gameplay, such as a fan that helps you direct the path of the fizzball. The fizzball is occasionally hard to track, and we sometimes lost it during the bonus rounds. We also found that the ball was sluggish for a few seconds after we resumed a paused game.

The game is very kid friendly. There's a kids' play mode that places a barrier below the paddle so the ball will always be in play. The younger set will also like the animal quizzes between rounds, and a kid track with easier levels. There is also the animal sanctuary, where you can see which animals you've collected and check their hunger fund. Coins maintain the hunger fund, and since the animals keep eating even when the game isn't running, you must gather enough coins (by catching them with your fizzball) to maintain the fund.

The bottom line. FizzBall is a great example of a Mac casual game that immerses adults and kids alike.

COMPANY: Grubby Games
CONTACT: www.grubbygames.com
PRICE: $19.95
REQUIREMENTS: 400MHz G3 or faster or Intel CPU, Mac OS 10.2 or later, 128MB RAM, 35MB disk space
Kid friendly. Big variety in levels. High fun-to-price ratio. Universal binary.
Can lose track of ball in some bonus levels. Sluggish ball after pause in game.

Tips: Lego Star Wars II

Matt Osborn — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 16:21:42 -0500

Lego Greedo can't be far away.

Feral's Lego Star Wars II ($40, www.feral.co.uk) combines the classic Star Wars universe (from episodes IV to VI) with the lovable style of Lego building blocks, all wrapped up in platform/collection gameplay. Armed with a good blaster and these tips, win the game you will.

> Destroy canisters and collect studs to save up and buy the 2x Score. Always have it active. Buy the 4x, 6x, and so on to drastically increase your stud potential.
> Buy all the Bounty Hunter characters (Greedo, Boba Fett, IG-88, Bossk, Dengar, and 4-Lom) to open the door with Jabba's head over it in the Cantina.
> Don't waste your studs on characters you can unlock for free by completing stories.
> Collect 99 gold bricks and build a fountain that showers you in an endless supply of studs, outside the Cantina.
> You can unlock Power Block Invulnerability in Free Mode in Episode IV Chapter V with a Protocol Droid and a Jedi. Open the first locked room after the trash compactor - and remember that you still have to spend $900,000 to activate it.

SketchFighter 4000 Alpha

Zack Stern — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 16:15:10 -0500

We can't get enough of the graphic style. Explosions and dead enemies leave eraser scuffs on the background.

SketchFighter 4000 Alpha brings so much style to an arcade shooter that it almost forgets to pack the substance. Instead of the latest glossy 3D graphics, SketchFighter animates scribbles from a teenager's math homework into a top-down, 2D arcade shooter - and the uneven, scribbled lines are as stunning as they are simple.

As in other arcade-style shooters, players fly through the mazelike worlds, blasting enemies and finding power-ups. But the single-player game is merely adequate compared to the art-direction's excellence. It's often too difficult, rewarding the most cautious players and penalizing those of us who would rather blaze ahead.

SketchFighter shines, however, in its multiplayer mode. Two people play at the same time, locally or over the Internet, but they can never stray too far apart because of a tether between their ships. This mode offers cooperative and competitive flavors, but we wish that two people could play the full single-player game together.

The bottom line. SketchFighter 4000 Alpha waffles between fun and frustrating. Its gameplay can't match the unique visual experience.

COMPANY: Ambrosia Software
CONTACT: www.ambrosiasw.com
PRICE: $19
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.2 or later
Fantastic art design. Creative levels. Two-player matches. Includes level editor. Universal binary.
Uneven difficulty. No widescreen support. No gamepad support.

Smack Mahjong

Cathy Lu — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 17:12:31 -0500

In Smack Mahjong, you click matching pairs of tiles to make them disappear.

Solitaire and killing time go hand in hand, but we're looking for a new game to help pass those last minutes before quittin' time. We think we found it with Smack Mahjong. The goal is to click on pairs of matching tiles and eliminate them from the board, but you can only select tiles that are free on the left or right. A clock keeps track of your time, so you'll want to work as quickly as possible, but the game doesn't have any sort of leaderboard for bragging rights.

You can choose from three types of tiles and more than 50 layouts, including classic, pyramid, and star. You can also create your own layout if you've got your mahjong mojo working. As for tiles, you have your pick of a classic mahjong set, a beautiful black set, or giant Roman letters and numbers—great for kids but annoying for anyone who's made it past kindergarten.

Because the tiles are stacked, even the eagle-eyed will find it hard to see the tiles in play. Luckily, you can set the game to highlight the tiles that can be matched. This works well with the classic set, but the highlighting is barely visible with the black tiles. Out of frustration, we stuck with the regular set, but experienced players might want a challenge.

The game informs you when you've run out of matching pairs, and if you're stuck, you can click the Hint button. Doing so quickly flashes a matching pair but penalizes you 30 seconds.

The bottom line. Smack Mahjong isn't flashy, but it's a faithful interpretation of a classic game.

COMPANY: Midori
CONTACT: www.midoritech.com
PRICE: $19.95
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS X
Three tile sets and tons of layouts.
Highlighted tiles can be hard to see. No fastest-time board.