Babar and the Royal Coin Caper review

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Verdict:

Babar's search for the royal coin collection is a simple and engaging game that helps children learn.

Review Date: 20 Jan 2006

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: Katl Wright

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

Babar is a cartoon character whose adventures are aimed at pre-school children.

In this game, toddlers are invited to help Babar recover his royal coin collection, which he's carelessly lost - scattering it all over town in places from the fun fair to the football pitch.

In each location you have to complete a task - at which point you're given some coins to put in the royal coin album. To finish the whole game, in case you haven't guessed, you have to fill the album.

This game is bright, colourful and simple to find your way around - as you'd expect from software aimed at kids who are three years old and up. In each task the child has to practice one or more basic skills, such as hand-eye co-ordination or the ability to recognise and match colours. Tasks are pitched at the right level to challenge an older toddler, but they do go on for quite a while. For example, in the soccer game you have to hit not just one, but four sets of targets before you get your coins. This will tax the patience of even the most angelic pre-schooler.

Because it can't use written words to communicate quick snippets of information, the game also ends up speaking over itself sometimes - for instance telling you the name of a colour while it congratulates you on having scored a goal. We were also a bit surprised that a game with such basic graphics will only run on systems that have at least a 500MHz processor and 128MB RAM.

These are, however, minor niggles. For the most part, the game was fun and engaging - its combination of simple tasks and colourful graphics is perfect for very young children.

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