PC

  News 
  Reviews
  Previews
  Hardware
  Interviews
  All Features

Areas

  3DS
  Android
  iPad
  iPhone
  Mac
  PC
  PlayStation 3
  PlayStation 4
  Switch
  Vita
  Wii U
  Xbox 360
  Xbox One
  Media
  Archives
  Search
  Contests

 

Didi and Ditto: Kindergarten

Score: 85%
ESRB: Everyone
Publisher: Kutoka Interactive
Developer: Kutoka Interactive
Media: CD/1
Players: 1
Genre: Edutainment

Graphics & Sound:

With purple wolves, red and blue beavers and various other creatures of odd colors, Didi and Ditto: Kindergarten is an edutainment game kids of different ages will enjoy.

The claymation-style graphics of Kindergarten keeps children entertained and involved in the game as they go through the many missions and search out fruit and vegetables for the abnormal wolf.

The colorful and highly detailed locations found throughout the game also add to Didi and Ditto's enjoyment, giving young gamers plenty of areas to click on just to see what happens. The characters themselves also allow the children's imaginations to run wild as they match patterns, shapes, colors, sounds and numbers.

Sound is pretty fair, though there were several occasions where the sound clips either didn't play or weren't available. For instance, while helping Tiny Turtle match bubble shapes, whenever you complete a segment, the turtle's head comes up and his lips start moving but alas, no sound comes out. Though this was a rare occurrence, it was definitely noticeable and detracted from the game.


Gameplay:

Didi and Ditto are a pair of beavers. At the start of Didi and Ditto: Kindergarten, the player chooses whether he or she wants to be the sister (Didi) or the brother (Ditto). After choosing your gender, you see the two beavers playing a round of 'Turnip Tennis', when a loud noise causes them to wander into the nearby woods. There, one of the siblings (the one that you didn't choose) is captured by the purple wolf known as Zolt.

Thankfully, for the beavers' sake, Zolt is a vegetarian and according to the instruction manual, 'He would much rather eat veggies than a beaver if he has the choice.' Zolt holds the unlucky sibling as a hostage until you can collect 12 foods (six vegetables and six fruits) for him to eat instead of the furry creature.

>From the nearby Jako's Valley, you can access many different locations that (upon completing a task) will get you one of the foods you desire. There are eight locations to visit, each one with one or more activities to play through. Activities range from the classic musical-memory pattern matching game, where you have to hit xylophone keys in the same order that the computer does, to the basic counting and addition skills needed in kindergarten. There is also a pond crossing game where you guide frogs from lily pad to lily pad until you reach the answer to the math question posed. Didi and Ditto also teaches basic spelling in games like 'Grease Making'. Here you fill up jars of grease by spelling words correctly, but unfortunately this game does not yield any food.


Difficulty:

Didi and Ditto: Kindergarten has three difficulty levels. These different settings make the questions asked or patterns to be matched more difficult. This allows children who have mastered the game at one level to continue playing at a more difficult setting. Or, if they started off on one of the higher levels, but seem to be getting frustrated quickly, they can lower the difficulty setting.

Game Mechanics:

Didi and Ditto: Kindergarten uses a basic point-and-click interface, along with static, clay-looking backgrounds and 3D-characters that help to give off a fantasy feel to the entire game. Through these various methods, Kindergarten does a great job of pulling kids into the game and getting them involved in the various activities.

Kindergarten provides a wide range of activities, though most of them are geared to teach the same basic concepts, just in a different manner. Despite its few flukes, Didi and Ditto: Kindergarten is a good game that will help in the development of any young gamer.


-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications
AKA Chris Meyer

Minimum System Requirements:



Windows 98/200/ME/XP; CPU: Pentium II 300MHz; RAM: 128 MB; Video and Sound: DirectX; CD-ROM: 12X; 40 MB of hard drive disk space.
 

Test System:



Windows XP Professional Ed.; AMD Athlon 600 MHz; 512 MB RAM; 24X CD-ROM; Geforce3 Ti200; DirectX 9.0.

Windows Crusader Kings Windows Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed

 
Game Vortex :: PSIllustrated