A top preschool TV program has come to life on the computer for the first time. When Emmy and Max are confined to the indoors because it's raining outside, it only makes sense that they say the magic poem that transports them to Dragon Land! A springtime festival is about to take place, and celebration is in the air.
There are plenty of things to do to prepare for the big Dragon Land Festival — the dragons will need music, flowers, and even rain clouds before the festivities begin. Kids can help by travelling to any of three areas with characters from the show.
Zak and Wheezie, the brother and sister pair that together forms a two-headed dragon, guide children on a quest for musical sounds. Kids need to listen carefully to find sounds in the foggy forest — when a sound becomes louder, they are on the right track. Players fix broken musical instruments by matching puzzle pieces, and they experiment with sounds in the kitchen by changing the level of liquid in glasses and tapping them with a spoon. Preschoolers use a backpack to collect sounds, and then arrange them to produce a song for the festival.
Seeds need to be planted for the party, so Emmy and Max help kids select soil, water, and sunlight combinations to produce different kinds of flowers. Children can experiment with different types of soil, quantities of water, and amounts of sunlight in an open-ended fashion or follow the combinations in a book to grow specific types of flowers. After selecting the seeds for the flower of their choice, kids "plant" them on the site where the festival will take place.
Ord and Cassie accompany children on a journey to find ingredients for making rain clouds. They visit Rainbow River where they mix primary colors to make new ones, adjust a set of mirrors in order to reflect and capture light in a jar, and search for secret ingredients hiding in a field of colorful mushrooms. Once all three ingredients have been selected, kids need to arrange them in the cloud-making machine in such a way so that they will travel through the correct maze of pipes.
Once all preparations are complete, the festival begins and the adventure ends. The final scene is somewhat anti-climactic because it is short-lived, but children earn congratulations for a job well done.
The program also includes an activity in which children select any of six songs to drop into a magical fountain in order to watch enjoyable music videos culled directly from the television show.
One of this title's strengths is its smart feedback — the software "knows" where kids have been in the program. As well, the game is very nurturing, and children are encouraged to solve problems every step of the way. A handful of small flaws are worth noting, however. Many animations and chatter cannot be interrupted, making the program slow moving at times. As well, too many steps are required to exit the game; and, though there are three levels of difficulty, game-play doesn't change significantly from one level to the next.
