I have just finished what
may be the best children’s game
ever. It’s very short for an adult player-an hour or so broken
up into six chapters-but the game makes up for that with creative
situations and excellent writing. Most people have never heard of
Moop and Dreadly and that is a testament to the way the gaming world
is today-it is a world where quantity trumps quality. Games that
don’t make maximum use of your graphic card and sound card
features
just don’t get the support from the developers and publishers.

Moop and Dreadly are on
the search for adventure in the form of a mysterious treasure.
When they become stranded on Bing Bong Island,
they must deal with the challenges of Chief Earwig find the Chief’s
daughter, and outwit the infamous pirate, Captain Trench. Dreadly
is a boy with boundless enthusiasm for adventure. Moop, an indeterminate
creature that reminds me of a Wookiee, reluctantly gets dragged into
Moop’s single-minded quest for the treasure, if only to ensure
the safety of his friends.

The screen is just a delight
in terms of color and accessibility. Every screen is colorful and
bright and a similar bright humor pervades
every scene. Children will find the interface simple to use. Using
inventory items is intuitive-just click once to pick up and click
again to use in a particular place. Hovering the cursor over an item
elicits a voiceover description so there is never ant confusion about
what any specific item is. Especially noteworthy is that everything
in the game makes sense. Every item found has a sensible purpose.
There are no red herrings and nothing that requires the logical skills
of Einstein to work out. Although marketed for children of five years
and over, my four-year-old son completed the game with only two instances
of assistance from me. Particularly entertaining was the 1930s serial
cliffhanger ending the player is presented with at the completion
of a chapter. Beginning the next chapter, the player is treated to
a recapping of the prior chapter’s events in the form of a
newsreel with a similar amusing style and voiceover.

Both of the Readmes (one
technical and one gameplay related) indicates that the makers of
this game take quality seriously. Listed is the
website for Plaid Banana Entertainment Customer Support (www.plaidbananagames.com)
as well as an email ([email protected]) but
rest assured, players, this is one of the most stable games I’ve
ever played. It’s highly unlikely that you will experience
anything glitchy from the moment you install the game until the final
uninstall. I had a completely uneventful installation and uninstallation.
I experienced one error when I hadn’t played the game for a
while. I received a message that said “you are missing important
data, please install the game”. I promptly did this and did
not receive this message again. I cannot be certain that this was
my fault or related a design glitch because it didn’t happen
again but thought it should be mentioned.

Some other strengths that
struck me about this game include the full closed captioning or
subtitling option, not just in English
but in Spanish as well. The game can also be played in Spanish too.
In addition, a player could choose to play the game in one language
and have the subtitles in the other language. The game includes a
full walkthrough as well as less detailed spoilers in one of the
two Readmes. Lastly, and most impressive for a children’s game,
it includes two different endings that reflect how the player responds
to a moral decision at the end. Well done, Plaid Banana!

For game industry trivia
buffs, this last bit may be of interest. The developer of this
game, Ron Gilbert, has a resume as long as
your arm. He is responsible for the Script Creation Utility for
Maniac Mansion, better known as SCUMM, which changed the face of the adventure
game world as we know it. He worked in the early days for LucasArts,
creating “little known” titles Maniac Mansion, Zak McCracken
and the Alien Mindbenders, the Indiana Jones series, Loom, the Monkey
Island series, Day of the Tentacle, and Full Throttle. Moving on
to Humungous and then to Hulabee, he created many of their Putt Putt
and Freddie Fish titles [In may ways, I get the impression that Moop
and Dreadly is an homage to such 1960’s children’s classic
cartoons as Gerald McBoing Boing and Beany and Cecil – Randy].

Of greater salacious interest is that his partner at Humungous
and Hulabee was Shelly Day, who also worked at LucasArts, even working
on Loom and Indiana Jones with him. Shelly Day was recently jailed
for bank fraud for two years for fraud. She had used the money in
an attempt to buy a $3 million house, but her defense claimed she
was going to repay the money once games in development reached the
marketplace. Judging from the quality of this title, that statement
may not have just been hot air.

Final Grade: A
(find out more about our
grading system)

System Requirements:

• Windows 95/98/Me/XP/2000 Pro
• Pentium 233
• 32MB RAM
• 150MB free uncompressed
  hard disk space
• 4X speed CD-ROM drive
• 16-bit DirectX-compatible
  sound card
• 16-bit DirectX-compatible
  video card
• DirectX 5 (DirectX
  8 included)