Theme Park Ds

'My Amusement Park' mixes business with fun

As the summer months roll on, many families will visit an amusement park. Before screaming their heads off on their favorite rollercoaster, it might be fun for your kids to check out "My Amusement Park" on the Nintendo DS. The game will teach them about the business of running an amusement park while also challenging them to solve fun logic and memory puzzles. It is a perfect game to pack for the trip that gets you to the real park.

Published by Scholastic, this DS game invites kids to design their own amusement park. They are provided with the layout of an empty park and $900 to start purchasing attractions. As the park builder, kids choose a theme which can include Mountains, Safari, Desert or Tropical. Next, they scroll through a variety of rides, food pavilions and amusements to add to the park. Each costs money to build. For example, if you select the Octopus Ride, it will cost you $200 to build, where a Bumper Cars ride will cost $500.

But there is more to building a ride than just selecting it and paying the money. Kids will also need to play memory games to help construct the ride. They will look at the ride's schematic plan and try to remember where all the pieces go. Then the ride will break apart, and they will be tasked with using the stylus to drag and drop the scrambled parts into the correct places.

Kids can run through the initial $900 pretty quickly. Luckily, the game provides many ways for players to earn more money so that they can continue to expand their park. One way is to play a maintenance game. The game sends alerts when a ride, food venue or special attraction breaks down. When kids click on the alert, they are taken to a special game where they must drag pipes or wires onto a schematic to make them all fit. By solving this puzzle correctly, kids fix the ride or attraction and it starts making money again.

There are also six management games to play to earn more money. These vary greatly, but many involve logical thinking. For example, the one called Parking Lot Jam is a take-off of the popular "Rush Hour" puzzle where cars are jammed into a parking lot grid. You have to figure out the order in which to move the cars to create a path for the designated car to make it to the exit. In another game, you must study the ride's seating area, and then grab parts off a conveyor belt to match the picture on the top screen and recreate the ride's broken part.

Peppa Pig: Theme Park Fun DS Review | Junior Gamer

Peppa Pig Theme Park Fun is another impressive game for really young players. A story and more involved challenges join the physics based fun. Our junior gamer gives us the low down.

There are a lot of games aimed at younger players that are just grownup games with different graphics and made easier. But Peppa Pig is quite different to those.

The game looks a lot like the TV program that I watch with my little brother, now I'm a bit old for it - I still like it though. But it's the way the different games move around that is the best bit.

Each minigame has different controls and a series of things you have to do. The bits of the game that you have to move around with the DS pen, and put in the right place, all feel like they are really there.

When you touch the screen they move to exactly where you put them rather than just clicking into place. It makes the games much more fun. Also the games are a bit more complicated because you can solve them in different ways.

My little brother often just moves things all over the place to try and finish a challenge. This works sometimes, but when I show him what you actually have to do he gets on a lot better.

Peppa Pig Theme Park Fun is quite like the other Peppa Pig games on the DS, but this time there is more of a story to work through as well. You don't have all the different activities there at the beginning. You have to unlock them one at a time. This was fun until our save file was deleted by mistake. I had to play through the games again to catch back up to where we should have been.

There are a few games in the story that have become our favourites. I like the tool search car fixing game, and my brother likes making sandwiches - although he always just puts absolutely all the ingredients in every one. I don't think I would eat them, but the game doesn't seem to mind, apart from say "that's an unusual sandwich, oink!"

We haven't unlocked them all yet, but the box says there are 18 different games to play. I guess we are over half way then. I'm looking forward to unlocking the bumper car game at the fairground - there's a picture of it on the back of the pack so I know it is coming up soon.

Being a bit old for Peppa Pig now I didn't think I'd enjoy the game, but actually it is quite fun. My younger brother is really into the TV show (he's four) and seems like the perfect age for the game as well.

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