Crafting Mama from Majesco Reviewed

I just received Masjeco's Crafting Mama for the Nintendo DS to test out. This game is rated E for everyone. What is it? Its a sort of puzzle game brain-teaser with the goal of having the player take part in completing a selection of crafting projects - from making candles to earrings to blowing glass and making flower-rings. Basically, an assortment of summer-camp-esque arts and crafts projects, challenging the player to complete each project as fully and accurately as they can.

So the way that it works? Take for example making candles. The project is broken down into several steps - 1)Crush up plain white candles (to melt into liquid wax.) 2) Select from a number of colors of crayons, and then crush up the crayons to melt into the wax. 3) Pour said crushed crayons into melted wax and mix. 4) Pour melted wax into molds. 5) Tap free the finished candles from their molds. Each project is broken down into 3-6 steps. Completing each step is not necessary to move on to the next step, however more successful completion results in a higher final score, up to 100.

Crafting Mama challenges the player in a number of ways. As you try to complete each part of a craft project, each step presents a unique challenge to complete in order to succeed. It may require tapping on the screen at the right moment, swiping the screen with the stylus at the right time or in the right direction, or blowing into the microphone just long enough (or short enough) to complete a step. Examples : on step one of candle making, you have to hit with a mallet (by tapping the screen with the stylus) white candles that are rolling across the screen at varying speeds, from both sides. They get faster over time, and you have only a limited time to complete the step. Move on to step two, and you must crush several piles of crayons into powder - again by tapping the screen - but complete within the time allowed. Step three makes you pour the powder into the melted pot of wax- but you must time it right or you miss the pot. So on and so forth. Along each step, the "Crafting Mama" gives directions on how to complete each, but it is up to the player to use those directions correctly.

I played a dozen or so of the craft projects (you unlock more as you successfully complete others, up to a total of 40). After this, I handed the DS over to my 4 year old pre-schooler (she is 3 months shy of 5) to see how she did with it. Some of the craft projects she picked up the steps easily and was doing just as well as I was. Others, she did have some difficulty with, but after being shown how to do it, was able to pick it up and run with it fairly easily. There is a bit of a learning curve attributable to the fact that a lot of the directions are written, rather than spoken. Aside from this, with a small amount of help from a parent, a 4-5 year-old and up would have little trouble picking up the fundementals required to play this.

So there are a number of things I like about this game. From a parent's perspective, there is no "you lose" feedback given from the game. Even when the player fails to complete the task, Crafting Mama utters encouraging words like "keep it up!" or "don't worry, there's always next time!" So even the most epic of failures isn't a big discouragement to the littlest players, who often take the negative feedback most to heart, and will run crying in one direction while they chuck the DS the other way. So even when my almost 5 year-old was losing, she was still having fun. When the player does complete a craft successfully, and depending on how well they score, pieces of various pictures get revealed. As each picture is revealed, it goes into a master gallery of pictures, allowing the player to later go back and see all of the pictures they have revealed from their crafting work.

I like variety of different tasks and the wide range of input that is needed from the player. It challenges the player to constantly learn new skills and apply that to each task in the game. It means the player is using their brain in order to solve problems and then translating that into the fine-motor skills to input that into the DS. This is especially useful with smaller children who are still learning to hold a pen and write as it helps to develop the hand-eye coordination and hand muscle dexterity that is necessary for those early elementary school handwriting lessons. The range of different tasks is impressive. If I had completed every single step successfully the first time, I would still have spent 4-5 hours playing to complete every single thing in the game.

Crafting Mama is easily a replayable game - its lack of storyline and attention to minigames means that players can shuffle through the various projects for hours, and then return to the beginning and try to improve on their prior bests. In the short-attention span world of 4-7 year olds, it held the attention of my little one long enough that I had time to write this while she sat nearby- and she only interrupted me a couple of times to have me help her do something for her. This is a huge plus, as for parents looking for something to keep their child occupied with while trying to do something like make dinner, do work, chores, or even drive to grandma's house- this will keep the kid mostly quiet. I LOVE THAT.

On more technical notes - The graphics are cute - very appropriate for the age group. The graphics are colorful, the everything is easy to recognize, which makes it easy for children to understand what is going on and what to do. The screen is not cluttered with unnecessary graphics, nothing much to distract from the game. The music is fun and varied - and yet not too annoying. This will be cherished by parents the world over, who know all to well that after hearing Dora or Diego, or any of the myriad of other favorite children's characters our there, that you can only hear a song like "I'm the Map" so many times before you want to thrown that stupid Map through the window.

Though I had no way of testing it, Crafting Mama does had a multi-player option, so that up to 4 players on separate DS systems can play each other in crafting competition. If you have multiple children and take frequent long car-rides, this could occupy them for potentially hours. Another big boon.

The actual mechanical aspect of the gameplay - which is 98% stylus, is not at such a fine resolution that the gameplay is impossible for children to get it- there is a lot of room for error built in, so when you tap near the target, it sort of snaps to the right spot. This will undoubtedly alleviate a lot of what would otherwise quickly become frustration.

The bad? Frankly, I don't really have anything to complain about. Does this hold my attention? Not really, but I'm obviously not in the target age-group for this game. I've played several kids games for the DS and the Wii, and found the biggest problem with them is that they can be VERY limited in scope. Kids get bored very easily and lose interest in stuff very quickly. The factIi've been sitting here with my daughter for about 1 1/2 hours without her running off to do something else is proof positive that this is a real winner. If you are a parent and you have or your child has a DS, you MUST get this game. Maybe not all kids will eat this up, but I think the majority of them will.