Oscar The Balloonist: My Creative Workshop

Oscar The Balloonist: My Creative Workshop is a collection of artistic activities and mini games for young children.

Once past the logos, title screens and language selection the game starts with Oscar landing his balloon out of which a crate, a book, and Carmela the stripy trunk all tumble. These three items ate hotspots linking to the game's activities which are;* Oscar's Creative Corner: The player access this by selecting the crate in the lower left of the main screen. The main screen resembles the opened crate with lots of toys and stuff poking out the top, each one opens a new activity which is shown on the side of the crate. Options available are; + printing pictures to colour in off-line + Oscar's Mythical Creature Machine - here the player rolls a dice and the game generates a creature from parts of easily recognised animals such as cows and horses, the result can be printed off to be coloured in + Models: There's Oscar's balloon, Oscar, a jumping pig, animal masks, farmyard buildings and people, a mobile and finger puppets all of which are to be printed, cut and glued - they all come with instructions

• Oscar's Design and Print Department: This is accessed via the book on the main screen. It shows the pages of a book with many tabs, each tab representing a different item that the player can design and print. Options available are gift tags, place cards, greeting card, post card, diary page, photo frame, timetable, zoologist notebook, visiting card, calendar page, door hanger, stationery and voucher/certificate.
• Carmela's Games: As with the crate in Oscar's Creative Corner the player is presented with Carmela the trunk, her lid is open and lots of stuff pokes out from within. As each game opens Carmela provides animated instructions with a voice over so the player is in no doubt what they have to do. The games are;
  • Mouse Hunt: This is triggered by clicking on the owl, it's a Whac-A-Mole variant where the player clicks on mice running across a field to help the barn owl feed their chicks
  • The Apple Picking Tower: A logic problem in which the player builds a tower to help Oscar pick apples. Towers are built with crates, only one crate can be carried at a time and small crates can go on top of big ones but not the other way around.
  • Fishbones: Selected by clicking on the fish in Carmela the trunk. This puzzle has the player reassembling a fish skeleton
  • The Flower Jigsaw: There's just one picture in this jigsaw which the player completes by drag-and-dropping pieces into the picture outline. The player has the choice of an easy or a hard puzzle, in both cases all the pieces are correctly oriented and cannot be placed incorrectly.
  • Spot The Difference: This is selected by clicking on the snake because the player has to spot the differences between two pictures of a snake. There is just one picture puzzle with ten differences and there is no penalty for random clicking
  • The True of False Game: Players select this game by clicking on the hedgehog, in the game the player hears a statement and must click on the thumb up or thumb down button to say if it is right or wrong. Each time the player gets an answer right a flower grows. Sounds easy but do you know if chamois walk on tiptoe?
  • The Headgear Game: In this game the player puts different hats and horns onto a roebuck, each selection is rewarded with a humorous comment, there's no special prize for putting the right antlers on his head.

The game can be played in both English and German. It has music throughout and whenever the mouse cursor passes over a button or hotspot Oscar is on hand to say what that control does.

The game comes with two screensavers;- Filename oscar1 : A frog drifts around on the lily pad, occasionally a fish jumps and/or the frog catches a fly - Filename oscar2: This has a mole popping up from a mound of earth and then crawling away underground