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The plot, characters and interface are completely different from Strawberry Magic, but almost none of the puzzles carries a pronounced educational element. It's the most technologically powerful Israeli game of its time (two CDs, a huge number of videos, dozens of professional actors in voice acting, serious visual effects, and so on). At the edge of the forest next to the river along with the family lives a little beaver named Ben. One day, he learns from an elderly relative that his teeth at his "tribe" grind off over time from the hard work of breaking wood bark while feeding and building dams, and sooner or later fall out altogether. Ben is absolutely not satisfied with this situation, and he begins to seriously dream of magical teeth - which are not subject to any harmful effects of the environment and will forever remain with him intact. Upset beaver falls asleep (this is very important), and here he sees two fairy fairies. After listening to the lamentations of the future hydrobuilder, the couple says that it is possible to find such teeth in the magical underwater world; but in order to get there and persuade the king, we will have to go through a lot of trials to share this gift. And since Ben will not tolerate staying in sea water, they turn him into a hybrid of beaver and triton with the ability to instantly return to the previous image when leaving to the surface - and at the same time they give a golden key with which he will begin his journey. It's aimed at children of "older preschool" age, still not necessarily well-read, but already having some vocabulary, there is very little text - in general, only in the menu (which is easy to understand and without knowledge of the language) - but no subtitles are provided, and the speech component is crucial for moving along the plot , because oncoming characters will give us "tasks", mandatory for execution. The second feature is it's relatively non-linear, and at the same time - non-intuitiveness even for an adult player, not to mention children (perhaps, by the way, it was for this reason that sales were so bad): the probability that you, without understanding the remarks addressed to you , independently guess, if not about the meaning, then at least about the sequence of the necessary actions, is very small. Here is an example: at the very beginning, after the introductory video, we see Ben already turned into a hybrid and located in the water next to the old beaver. You can, on the one hand, go "to the depths", on the other - no one forbids you to immediately get to the surface and go into the forest, and in both cases the action will be active (if such a word is applicable here) to unfold further. At the same time, only one of these options is "correct". As for the basis of any quest - the riddles themselves - many of them are quite similar and primitive: we are looking for items placed in the inventory panel, divided into cells and displayed at the bottom of the screen (control, if anything, is done with the mouse), and exchange they are used by characters for some other or are used on certain objects or are used jointly; in other words, there will almost certainly not be any difficulties with how to do something, but alas, it’s almost impossible to avoid what exactly is required. At the same time, there will be something else: for example, determining the correct sequence or - which may sadden some lovers of “calm” games - “arcade inserts”. Some of these - like, say, a tennis game with an octopus - apparently in general are not obligatory for passing and serve exclusively the cause of fun; but others may be just varieties of "tasks", and without achieving success in them, it will not be possible to acquire the necessary object. |
