Fun and useful maths title
If you've got little ones who are just venturing along the road to learning their first numbers and are being introduced to the wonderful world of maths, then you could do a lot worse than point them in the direction of Number Munchers. It's a pretty decent edutainment title and while it may lean a little more to the 'tainment' side of things that the 'edu', after spending a couple of hours with the game, the kids should come away feeling a bit more confident about that their maths skills. Upon firing up the game, you're greeted with a number of options, the most important of which is the exact type of skills to be practising, with everything from multiples to primes being included and you can either stick to one or test a bit of everything. Once the difficulty level is set, you then get introduced to the fun bit, which is the game's hero, a cute frog and his enemies, the troggles, a bunch of ugly little critters who come in a variety of flavours. The basic game takes the form of a sort of maze, where you control the little frog guy and must avoid the troggles by jumping only on the appropriate numbers, depending on what you selected. Stay alive long enough and you will rack up enough points to enter the Hall of Fame, but the fast-paced nature of the game will keep you on your toes while also proving extremely fun at the same time. There are a few cutscenes in between levels, but these can either be seen as amusing or a little odd, depending on your mood, and while the graphics are simple, they are effective enough and help to make Number Crunchers a decent enough little title.
