Serious Game Classification

Scavenger Hunt is based on "Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends", a children's TV series, which in turn is based on the Miss Spider series of books written and illustrated by David Kirk.

As you begin, you are given the choice of playing the full game or just the activities. If you choose the full game, you can select a difficulty level from 1 - 3.

Miss Spider gathers her children: Bounce, Squirt, Shimmer, and Dragon, and announces that there is to be a scavenger hunt - each bug-child has his own list of items from nature to find in Sunny Patch. There are various seeds to look for: floating seeds, golden seeds, sunflower seeds; different kinds of flower petals: pink and yellow; and berries - raspberry, strawberry, cranberry.

You begin by picking one of the children to go first; when you return with the items you'll pick another one until all four children are done - this is necessary to access the final activity.

The controls are point and click; clicking just ahead of your character keeps him moving in that direction. Clicking on certain items picks them up and you can then drag them into your inventory on the right side of the screen. On the left there is a leaf that will display the things you need to find for the scavenger hunt, and if you rest your mouse over an item you can also hear what it is. When you pull open your inventory panel, at the bottom there is a Miss Spider icon that will take you to the options screen, allowing you to save, load, create a new game, change the volume, view the credits or quit the game.

There are nine different activities (Two per child, plus one final), covering such developmental skills as logic, sequencing, sound memory, keyboarding, sorting and math. The final activity requires a little eye/hand/brain coordination to induce Miss Spider to show her DDR skills!

This game is suggested for children ages 4 - 7; younger ones may need some assistance with the arcade-style games even at the easiest level. [source:mobygames]

Distribution : Retail - Commercial
Platform(s) : Macintosh - PC (Windows)

Links

• http://www.mobygames.com/game/miss-spiders-scavenger-hunt/
• http://www.computertimes.com/oct06edchoiceMissSpidersSunnyPatchFr [...]