Zoombinis Island Odyssey
Hooray – another Zoombini adventure. This time it involves more than logic. Your job is
to restore the homeland of the Zoombinis, trashed by the Bloats, by starting with lowly
caterpillers and eventually ending up repopulating it with Zerbles. Your first challenge
is to get onto the island. Use the Catapult and program it with mudballs and boulders to
take advantage of the gear ratio.
Next onto the Wall, where by linking sets of related hieroglyphs, you can open the door to
let the Zoombinis pass through to get leaves to nourish the caterpillars.
Then on to the Planetarium. The caterpillars are now chrysalises. You will have to modify
the day/night cycle to get them to hatch. Finally, you get moths.
Now onto the Greenhouse, where the moths will pollinate the seedlings in the greenhouse.
This task is like the old Zoombini favorite – matching, sorting and grouping.
Next, the Garden. You're not finished yet. These are very fussy seedlings and must be
planted in the correct spot. The characteristics must match both by row and column. You
know where they are going – multi-dimensional arrangement of data. Fun anyway.
On to the Corral. We are now down to the home stretch, selecting and sorting the plants
to please the finicky Zerbles. This one uses overlapping spotlights for the selections. Too
complicated to explain – you'll just have to try it.
The final nitty-gritty – the Barn where you match pairs of Zerbles to produce the kind of
offspring most able to live in one of the three environments. I must admit that I had a
little problem with recessive genes. By now you've saved the day, repaired the chain of
life and can go back and do it at the "Very. Very hard' level.
For parents, there is a manual on the disk that will explain, in very big words, all the
concepts that your kid is learning.
Editor Review 11/02
The Zoombinis return to Zoombini Isle, and find that it has been used and
abused. The Bloats had used up all of the natural resources, and then left.
Along with them went the moths, who could not live in such depleted
land.
The Zerbles cannot live without the moths, and are quickly disappearing. The
Zoombinis arrive just in time, bringing moth caterpillars with them. You must
complete seven different challenges, each one in all three levels, before you
can save Zoombini Isle and the Zerbles.
I enjoyed the game very much; it is intellectually interesting and
challenging. However, I think that the jump between the first and second
levels is too much, and the second levels are a little bit too much harder
than the first ones.
For example, in the second challenge, where you try to fit pieces of
hieroglyphs into the wall, the first level has little red lights, and when
you get a set of hieroglyphs into the right place, the red lights turn green.
If one of the four hieroglyphs in the set doesn't turn green, it's wrong. In
the second level, there are no lights at all, and you have no way of telling
what's right and what's wrong. It may not seem that much harder, but it is,
because you only have a certain amount of wrong chances that you can get.
After that, you are stuck behind the wall until the next group of Zoombinis
come.
The games changes every time you play them, unpredictably, so you can play
them over and over and, after years and years, they all might become easy.
I played it with a friend once, and we took turns trying the different
levels, or one of us would figure it out and the other one would do it.
I think that it is a good game for kids that are ages six to thirteen, it is
that challenging in some parts, but it depends what people like, how smart
they are, and so on.
Some of the graphics are kind of wacky, sometimes they don't quite fit, like
in the first step/challenge, but other than that, the graphics are pretty
good.
All in all, I thought it was okay/pretty good.
Reviewed by: Tobie C. Age 12 - 03/03
The Zoombinis return to Zoombini Isle, and find that it has been used and
abused. The Bloats had used up all of the natural resources, and then left.
Along with them went the moths, who could not live in such depleted
land.
The Zerbles cannot live without the moths, and are quickly disappearing. The
Zoombinis arrive just in time, bringing moth caterpillars with them. You must
complete seven different challenges, each one in all three levels, before you
can save Zoombini Isle and the Zerbles.
I enjoyed the game very much; it is intellectually interesting and
challenging. However, I think that the jump between the first and second
levels is too much, and the second levels are a little bit too much harder
than the first ones.
For example, in the second challenge, where you try to fit pieces of
hieroglyphs into the wall, the first level has little red lights, and when
you get a set of hieroglyphs into the right place, the red lights turn green.
If one of the four hieroglyphs in the set doesn't turn green, it's wrong. In
the second level, there are no lights at all, and you have no way of telling
what's right and what's wrong. It may not seem that much harder, but it is,
because you only have a certain amount of wrong chances that you can get.
After that, you are stuck behind the wall until the next group of Zoombinis
come.
The games changes every time you play them, unpredictably, so you can play
them over and over and, after years and years, they all might become easy.
I played it with a friend once, and we took turns trying the different
levels, or one of us would figure it out and the other one would do it.
I think that it is a good game for kids that are ages six to thirteen, it is
that challenging in some parts, but it depends what people like, how smart
they are, and so on.
Some of the graphics are kind of wacky, sometimes they don't quite fit, like
in the first step/challenge, but other than that, the graphics are pretty
good.
All in all, I thought it was okay/pretty good.
Reviewed by: Tobie C. Age 12 - 03/03
Ages 8+