Crack It! Towers

Crash

Rosetta McLeod

CRASH COURSE By Rosetta McLeod GIVE GIRLS A BREAK A few months ago, I mentioned the problems that schools and parents are facing in interesting girls in computers. The London Borough of Croydon has now published a fascinating document entitled Girls and information Technology which reports the results of a survey commissioned by the Equal Opportunities Commission. It discusses the observation that computers seem to be used more by boys and male teachers than by their female counterparts, and refers to a study carried by the MEP Primary Project which showed that twice as many boys as girls have access to a micro at home. Why should this be? Are girls intrinsically less interested in computers than boys are? If parents consider it more important to provide home computers for sons rather than daughters what implication does this have for the future of women in an age of technology? In many secondary schools, computers have been linked with the mathematics department and too much emphasis has been placed on programming and numerical uses rather than data-processing and other social implications. Another problem is that traditional stereotyping seems to occur very early with boys being perceived to have more interest than girls in new technology. Girls may be keen to learn word-processing but seem to have little curiosity about other computer uses. Perhaps the problem lies in the content of the commercial software available. Girls are not nearly so interested as boys in arcade-type games and even educational software tends to be directed towards male interests. Luckily though, the programs I've looked at this month are of a particularly high standard and will appeal equally to boys and girls. CRACK IT! TOWERS Producer: Mirrorsoft Retail Price: £9.95 Age Range: puzzle fans of any age Crack It! Towers is a collection of puzzles which you must complete to steal the secret of Count Crack It's powers. Each of the rooms in the Towers contains a puzzle which has to be solved and to enter a room a player has to pass a mental arithmetic test. The first room is the home of Oswald the Rubber-necked Duck and the puzzle is to guess what Oswald wants for his dinner. Puzzles in the other rooms include working out the next number in a sequence, moving through a maze by means of the directions north, south, east or west, working out co-ordinates and completing the missing letters in a word. If a player fails a challenge he gets a ducking in a moat infested with piranha and even if he is successful in the puzzles he still has to cope with other problems which crop up. There are three skill levels to choose from - difficult, more difficult or impossible - and there is also the option of changing the sets of words in the word problems, a feature which extends the game's educational potential. A nicely written Visitors' Guide Book accompanies the game, giving hints on how to solve the puzzles and introducing the characters - Jim the Jellyfish. Albert the Allen and so on. The only thing that bothered me about this game is the claim that it is suitable for 'puzzle fans of any age'. Crack It' Towers is a game most definitely for children aged seven and over why pretend otherwise? COMMENTS Control keys: each puzzle has different requirements and the control keys are clearly described in the booklet Keyboard play: good, but it is annoying that if you inadvertently press the wrong key it is impossible to delete Graphics: very nice Use of colour: good

Sinclair User

Overall 3/5

Nicole Segre 3/5

Publisher: Mirrorsoft Price: £9.95 Memory: 48K This is designed as an educational game, but in trying to make it suitable for all age groups, Mirrorsoft has made it not terribly suitable for anyone except puzzle fans - of which, of course, there are many, both in and out of classrooms. The game starts in front of Crack It! Towers, which has eight numbered rooms. Collecting the golden keys to be found in each of the first seven rooms allows access to the eighth where the final puzzle must be solved to win the game. The seven rooms can be entered in any order, and each contains a different challenge, with an arithmetical or spelling problem or two along the way to provide the educational content. Room one, for instance, contains a Hangman-type puzzle, in which the aim is to spell what Oswald the Duck wants for dinner in less than nine attempts. Room three has a simple subtraction sum and a series of answers appearing in rapid succession. Pressing the space bar when the correct answer appears, automatically fires the laser gun with which the player attempts to shoot five bats. In another room, the object is to complete number sequences to get past the sharks exercising in the castle swimming pool. There's also a spider-zapping game involving some multiplication sums, an anagram game, and a minefield game in which you have to calculate the number of steps you can take in any direction before hitting a mine. In each room, completing the challenge successfully wins a golden key, while failing it sends the player into the moat. There are also a number of extraneous hazards. If you fall into the moat, you are threatened by sharks unless you solve a sum in time. Occasionally, a green spider, a blue skull or a black bat will steal one of your keys, but on the other hand you might find a bonus key in the Maze of Skulls, unless you get blown up instead. There are ghosts which hold you captive until you have filled in the missing letters of various words, and power failures which, as is their wont, can occur at any time: to get the lights back on, you must correctly spell a word that has briefly flashed onto the screen. Crack It! Towers can be played on three levels of difficulty, and a fourth option allows teachers to change all the word problems in the game to give it a longer lease of life. Whichever level is chosen, the games remain the same, with only the sums and word problems being altered. On the lowest level, there are sums like 3x1, while on the 'impossible' level (a gross exaggeration if ever there was one) the sums might involve the five times table and there are tricky words to spell like 'instinct' or 'receipt'. Thus the educational value consists purely in random drill tests to be completed against the clock. Because several of the games are quite hard to play compared with the sums to be answered, the program might well prove too frustrating for younger pupils, while not teaching enough to the older ones. The game has rudimentary graphics, with not even a hint of a splash, for instance, when you fall into the moat, and some very unsophisticated shapes to represent spiders, people or bats. That, however, does not matter too much. Crack It! Towers certainly has plenty of variety and ingenuity to while away a harmless hour or two, and no doubt the odd correct spelling or sum will be retained in enough memories to add a touch of usefulness too.