Counting on Frank
Description
Based on the book of the same title by Rod Clements.
Help Henry and his dog, Frank, to guess the number of jelly beans in a contest. New locations (such as the bedroom or the store) open as you progress in solving.
Here are presented three levels of math problems: basic operations (+, -, *, /); composite basic operations; percents and fractions.
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Average score: 4.5 out of 5 (based on 1 ratings)
The Good
This game has a good story with a nice variety of math games and math related questions that you earn clues on. Each of the math problems has a feature where if you are stuck it will give an explanation regarding the math involved and how to derive the answer. The number of funny things you can click on each scene that will perform an action was more than enough to keep the game interesting in between math problems. I had fond memories of this game as a kid and on a more recent play through found that this game still holds up.
The Bad
Even with all clues filled there is still a chance that the player will not guess the number of jelly beans correctly and have to keep finding more clues.
The Bottom Line
Counting on Frank is a point and click game which has the user guessing the number of jelly beans at the local store in order to win a trip to Hawaii for the main character, a boy named Henry and his dog Frank. Clues as to that number are gained by going through the town (store and park) and Henry's house and completing math challenges. Challenges are word problems with settings that can be set by the user to increase difficulty (one-step, two-step or multi-step problems) as well changing the variables to yield different results (13.5 foot tall Henry vs 58.5 foot tall Henry). Henry travels to 8 areas in search of clues: Store, Park, Front Yard, Living Room, Kitchen, Bathroom, Henry's bedroom and finally Henry's Treehouse. In each area that Henry travels to there are a number of amusing things to click on that will perform actions. After all clues have been gathered Henry travels to his Treehouse in order to put the clues together and the game ends back at the store to make his final guess. Upon a correct guess Henry is shown in Hawaii and the game ends.
Please see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0qSPyllTuY&list=PLeyd6qTlMUHzv1Zqz0ZosozU2Dda9jjJW for a playthrough of the game in its entirety.
Macintosh · by Legacy90sGames (6) · 2020
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Related Sites +
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Counting on Frank: Postmortem of an Edutainment Product
article which dissects the games positives and negatives -
Counting on Frank: Review
Review of the Macintosh version, posted on the Through the glass wall website, June 1999
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by POMAH.
Macintosh added by Jeanne.
Additional contributors: Jeanne.
Game added June 2, 2002. Last modified February 22, 2023.