Game Review: Strawberry Shortcake and Her Berry Best Friends
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What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that while the lead character,
Strawberry Shortcake, will appeal more to girls than boys, both
genders will find this puzzle game fun to explore. There is no
violence in this game, but some may not like that this world is
created with unhealthy sweets. However, those sweets do provide
an engaging backdrop for the logic puzzles presented in this
game. Most of the puzzles are right on target for ages 4-7, but
one is too much of a reach because it requires that kids know
how to add and subtract.
Families can talk about how important it is to eat healthy foods. This game presents the perfect forum to discuss how desserts are yummy, but that they should be eaten in moderation. Kids can also talk about what it means to be a good friend.
Common Sense Media Review
While Strawberry Shortcake and her friends live in a world
of frothy dessert foods, the puzzles found in STRAWBERRY
SHORTCAKE AND HER BERRY BEST FRIENDS have real substance.
The map of Strawberryland serves as the main menu for this game and provides 10 interactive locations to launch puzzles. Each puzzle is tied to "helping" one of Strawberry Shortcake's friends and is available on three levels of difficulty. By visiting the locations and solving the puzzles, you earn things for Strawberry Shortcake to put into her scrapbook.
With Orange Blossom, you help her make juice by rearranging different kinds of fruit on a grid. When you put three identical fruit pictures in a row or column, they disappear off the grid and become juice. With Angel Cake, you play a memory game. For a short period of time, she shows you a decorated cake and then challenges you to recreate it using 33 different decorating items. If you forget what the desired cake looks like, she lets you peek at it again.
Some of the other puzzles involve hunting for items in a crowded room, filling in musical notes to complete a song, working backwards to figure out how to recreate a decorated cookie, and hunting for Apple Dumplin' who is hiding in a grove of trees. In the latter puzzle, you are provided four clues about the desired tree's shape, color, pattern, and decoration.
While most of the puzzles are fun to solve and great for kids as young as 4, one is too tough for the target audience: The game with Honey Pie requires kids to add and subtract. Parents of preschoolers may need to help with that one. Also, the puzzle about inserting musical notes into a song was challenging.
In addition to earning items that appear in Strawberry Shortcake's scrapbook, kids can also get printable black-and-white pictures to color. There's one freestyle mini-game where kids can design there own cake, and two of the best puzzles are playable outside of the story-driven game for high-score bragging rights.
Parents worried about how much time their kids spend on the computer will appreciate this game's parental controls, which allow you to set how long your child can play.
Families who like this software should check out Miss Spider's Scavenger Hunt .
Common Sense Media is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing information to help parents make media and entertainment choices for their families.
