22 April, 2008 |

Casual Gamer Chick: Mia Reading: The Bugaboo Bugs Review

Mia Reading, by Kutoka Interactive, is an Edutainment (educational) game for children of all ages which builds on the Mia series of games. Mia is a mouse looking for adventures and in Mia Reading The Bugaboo Bugs Mia must help rid the house of pesky bugs before the humans find them. If Mia and her friends fail to remove the creatures, which highly resemble cockroaches, the family will call the exterminators and Mia’s family will be out on the streets.

Mia Reading is available on both Macintosh and Windows on a hybrid CD and has something for the whole family in terms of reading education from simple “level 1″ style activities such as picking the correct letter to spell “Dog” to Tic-Tac-Toe using words that ’sound like Snail.”. Your children can enjoy a fully fleshed out storyline in Adventure Mode or click right to the reading activities in Activities Mode.

A review of a children’s educational game isn’t complete without the right type of reviewer: my five year old daughter Brianna. If you want to introduce your child to video games, the educational gaming genre is a great introduction because they do not realize (yet) their learning. Although some of the activities are a bit over her head in terms of learning level, she still tries them repeatedly because children do not believe in limits and barriers–you can do anything you want to do.

Mia Reading doesn’t limit your child to reading a book; you child will learn to follow instructions, construct words, build sentences, spell correctly, rhyme words, plurals and singulars, sounding out words and verbal instructions. The core activities mimic what a child will learn at school but applied in a fun interactive manner with memorable characters.

There are twelve activities:

• Letter Arcade: Spelling words using jelly beans in a “crane game” style activity. You pull the joystick over the right jelly bean and lift it up with the crane.
• Tic-Tac-Phonics: Using “sounds like” style games you play tic-tac-toe with chips that have pictures representing the sound on them (b for blanket, t for tent, you get the idea).
• Bubble Blast: Shoot the letters with a bubble gun to fill in the missing letter in a word.
• The Domino Game: Taking four domino chips, spell words by chaining the chips together but you must do it under the constraints of time! One of the more challenging games for younger children.
• The Rhythm Circuits: Take two words that rhyme and plug them together, such as hat and cat but a bit more complex as you increase the levels of difficulty, some may even stump a parent!
• The Guard’s Test: You’re given the keyword “plural” or “singular” and you must find a word that fits the challenge. Words like “mouse” being singular while words like “mice” being plural. In adventure mode, you’ll encounter this game when it’s time to pass the guards and head to the queen of the Bugaboo.
• The Flea Circus: You’ll be given a partial sentence and you must find the best answer, for example “Bob crossed the road” and you’ll be given such answers as “yes” or “he was hungry” or “to get to the other side” and you must choose the best answer.
• Romain’s Safe: With a series of words, you must build a series of sentences which make sense to unlock the safe.
• Bat Cadet: Another challenging activity for younger gamers, this game uses reading skills and oral instructions to complete a series of tasks.
• Mr. Mole’s Stamps: Construct a time-line of events based on a series of pictures, ordering them correctly to win.
• Lite Write: Sentence construction where you’re given a jumble of letters and must write out the given sentence in the correct order.
• Write & Spell: Create words using a style similar to scrabble but in a kid friendly setting.

Each activity has a series of difficulty levels ranging from level 1 to level 4 with the fourth level being the most challenging yet still fairly straight forward for an adult; you can assist your children where needed and make it a family activity. Certain games will be easier for younger children to play by alone, while others they may require assistance. Brianna usually figured them out by blind luck it seemed, because most activities do not let you “fail” but will let you try many times until you get it right.

The activities are colorful, cheery and allow your child to visualize the goals and requirements. They are rewarded by voice overs from the animated characters and are encouraged to try again–your child will never feel like a failure and this is important because, as stated earlier, your child knows no barriers to learning. Unfortunately, later, we learn the technique of “I can’t do that” so it’s great to embrace the educational games early and often before they’re socialized into the belief of physical limitations.

Mia Reading is not simply a collection of mini-game activities but a fully fleshed out adventure with a great storyline for young children. You’ll play as Mia and you’ll explore the huge world of the humans from the grates of the heating system, closets, under tables and through the wide world of the kitchen. Younger children will be hinted through some of the quests by having Mia remind them of the task as they switch areas or limit where they can explore until completing a specific quest, much like a real RPG or adventure title.

The adventure interface is straight forward and easy to adapt to with visual que’s and explanation. You adventure by moving your mouse around the screen and having Mia follow it around. Mousing over objects will alter your cursor to a “pointing finger,” which indicates the object is clickable or can have action taken upon it. If your child can figure out how to move the mouse around the screen and click, they’ll have all the required assets to play Mia Reading Bugaboo Bugs!

The adventure does not simply string the activities together but builds on exploration and encourages creative thinking to complete the tasks. The initial quest has Mia looking for a battery and some copper wire for one of the characters in the game. Mia explores the area to find the battery but must complete one of the activities to be awarded the second material object in order to complete the quest.

The adventure mode allows you to carry out more than one quest at a time so you can move on from one quest if you encounter another along the way much like a standard RPG or online game like World of Warcraft but much more basic. It’s hard to grow bored when you’ve got so many tasks ahead of you. Children may feel like they’ve got an endless amount of enjoyment and tasks to complete; this isn’t a 10 minute adventure mode but a full featured game. Each quest brings a level of satisfaction, entertainment and educational value.

Thus far my daughter jumps on her mac book at least twice a day to play Mia Reading. She’s a huge fan of playhousedisney.com and it was extremely hard to pull her off the online flash games on their site. She’s also played Mia Reading more than Wii games and her DS games which are not educational! She doesn’t seem to realize Mia Reading is a learning game at all–it’s just fun.

The age range for Mia Reading is five to nine years of age and runs on:

Minimal System Requirements
Windows XP (sp2) / 2000 (sp4), VISTA; Processor: Pentium III - 1Ghz; RAM: 512 Mb
Video & Sound: DirectX 9 compatible; DVD-ROM Drive: 4X: Hard Disk Space: 1.2 Gb

Macintosh OS X, 10.4, 10.5; Processor: G4 - 1Ghz; RAM: 512 Mb
Video & Sound: Standard Macintosh; DVD-ROM Drive: 4X: Hard Disk Space: 1.2 Gb

You can find this game for $29.99 at Toys ‘R Us in the United States and $29.95 CAD in Canada at Kutoka’s online store.

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