Sammy's Science House

The Good
Surprisingly this online version of the game comes with two brand new activities for extra edutainment.

The Recycling activity does a good job of showing four different places where litter can be abundant. It also incorporates sorting different types of waste (including bulky refuse). Much as it teaches how to recycle, it doesn't point out the harm littering and pollution can do and lacks tips on how to reduce waste. An okay activity, I'll leave it at that.

The Create-a-Critter activity truly is a fun mini-game. Although it doesn't teach us much about animals, it has plenty of ways to mess about with the animals into weird hybrids which you can give your own names. Additional colours would have been nice, but there's enough to work with. As a bonus, it's the only printable activity never found in the original version of Sammy's Science House. I say play this one.

The Bad
When you show the game screens of this version side by side with the old ones in the PC version, you can see just how much detail is missing and how overly bold the outlines are, making it dull by comparison. It's like the graphics were traced on a tracing paper layer with a felt tip pen and coloured in with a paint bucket tool. Some of the objects in the activities are even downsized Whether this was to conserve disk space or to fully utilise the Flash mechanics, it is anyone's guess, but it's not an improvement to an already brilliant edutaining game.

The quality of the audio is even worse. The ones voicing them game don't project their voices very well so it doesn't effectively draw your attention to the game's elements. It's like they were just dictating and not even trying. Many of the characters sound like they're bored when they talk. Also the perfectly good sound effects that were put in the original version have been replaced by overused stock sounds. This is sure to result in a short attention span.

The Bottom Line
You wonder why Attainment would butcher the original version into a collage of tedious and uninspiring teaching tools. Everything in Theatrix Interactive's version of Sammy's Science House was fine. While the two new activities made a welcome change, the other changes to the graphics and audio were totally unnecessary. Children who may have grown up with this version may not notice the edge and effectiveness of the better PC version. If the Recycling and Create-a-Critter activities could be redesigned authentically with better quality knowledge added and then incorporated in the 1994 original product, that would be a true improvement.

The Good
The five activities are absolutely packed with content with room for both experimenting and following instructions from the character guides. A few of them even have adjustable difficulty for convenience of younger and older players. Temperatures are also in both Fahrenheit and Celsius to cater for whichever users are accustomed to. There's plenty of materials and combinations to play about with, a child is bound to pick up something useful to know in the process. The variety is abundant so nothing really feels the same as you play.

Graphics in the game are very crisp with not too much and not too little detail so you know what is clickable. There are sweet animations as a reward for your exploration and participation in the activities. Sound effects are so attention catching it adds to the incentive to play on. Acorn Pond is particularly rich in wildlife to go in-depth. It's quite the Easter egg in Make a Movie that Sammy in the movies intro is an allusion to the MGM lion logo.

The Bad
Good as Acorn Pond teaches about nature, it doesn't teach us a lot about animal habits throughout the seasons. For example the Cottontail Rabbit does virtually nothing from Summer to Winter. It would have been nice to see a few more visuals of the animals for added fascination, but as it is, it's enough to intrigue a love for wildlife in that particular ecosystem.

Another thing that lacks is that there's no profiles for the characters such as their understandings on science, although that might have been more of a distraction than a focus on learning. Overall, there isn't really anything wrong with this game.

The Bottom Line
When Donna Stanger developed this game, she really made her mark and in turn helped young learners to make theirs. This game may not teach you the heart of scientific ologies, but it does teach the world around us and fill some of the simplest gaps in basic knowledge. This game is like having your own digital laboratory to experiment in a safe manner within a safe environment. Even if this game may not meet up with a modern science syllabus, it's content will capture the hearts and minds of children for sure. A more up to date remake of the game on a mobile would be welcome for learning on the move.