Focus Lego My World School Skills review

This program may come from Lego but the bricks featured are Duplo, the big ones made for babies. Selling this to three- to six-year-olds is like offering teenagers a game called BMX Stabilisers Challenge.

Having cajoled our testers over this hurdle, we guessed our way through the install process (the instructions are incomplete), choosing the default Typical option, which took up space on our hard disk but still wouldn't run the program unless the CD was present. After a fly-through animation, you're greeted by a couple of Duplo people who invite you to log in. You then find yourself in a village populated by a variety of characters who talk to you and offer activities.

The on-disc manual explains that these characters each represent a theme and have a clever name to match, such as Matty Matics (numeracy) and Michelle Angelo (creativity). Unfortunately, none of this is clear onscreen, where you're left wondering who these people are and why they seem to be crowding in front of what you're trying to interact with.

There are lots of activities, some quite imaginative, such as drawing splodges to nudge a ladybird towards a flower (a bit like Vista's Inkball game) or changing the positions of animals to create a little movie of them sliding around, with each new move added on to the end. Some teach specific skills, such as moving a frog to the required position by adding and subtracting, or matching the written name of an animal to its sound. However, others have no obvious point, and some infuriatingly fail to recognise when you've correctly followed their commands. It all feels rather incoherent, and few if any tasks would be within the grasp of a three-year-old child.

School Skills isn't all that bad, but wasn't a big hit with our testers. For a fiver, though, you might still feel it's worth a go.