Thomas & Friends: Special Delivery review and giveaway

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We were fortunate enough to receive a copy of the new children’s computer game Thomas & Friends: Special Delivery from Brighter Minds Media. From the day it arrived and CJ saw the box he was excited about it. Thomas is one of CJ’s favorite characters in the whole wide world, so I was hopeful that he’d be able to play the game and enjoy it.

Thomas & Friends: Special Delivery is what I consider an edutainment game. It promotes basic life and educational skills while allowing children to enjoy a story featuring beloved and familiar characters. Your child might be having so much fun they may not even realize they’re learning! Some of the skills practiced in the game are puzzles, counting, shapes, colors, memory skills, observation, deduction and following directions. The game can be played on one of two levels. The characters featured in this game are Thomas and James. Sir Topham Hatt, Harold and Cranky the Crane also make appearances. The storyline behind the game is that James was picking up animals and taking them to the zoo and got lost on the way. His friends need to find him so the animals can be brought to the zoo for opening day.

At 9, CJ is developmentally delayed and not reading yet. One of the things that made this game great is that it was led by the narrator, so no reading skills were required. The narrator tells the player a part of the story, a chapter as it were. At the end of each chapter there is an activity. In the activities if a child selects a wrong answer they are gently encouraged to listen to the question again and try again. When a player completes the game a certificate of achievement can be personalized and printed. If a player leaves the game before completing it, his or her progress will be saved for the next time.

The whole game is point and click and it will help players work on simple mouse skills. There is no complicated keyboard interaction for little hands to have to remember and master. The game is animated, and the coloring of the game is bright and the appearance of the characters remains true to the television series. The harder level of the game follows the same storyline and activities but the activities are a bit harder.

CJ has been having a blast playing this game. He is so pleased that he can do it by himself. It took him a little over an hour to complete the game and activities on the easy level the first time he played it. He was able to figure out what was required for all of the activities except one (clearing the clouds over a forest). His favorite part was completing the puzzles to make the animals’ cages. The entire time he played all we heard was “I did it!”, “wow!” and “yay!”

I recommend this game highly for a number of reasons including the smile on my son’s face and the sense of empowerment and independence it gave him. From what I’ve been seeing for the past couple of days, CJ would rate it even higher than me. It is rated E for Everyone and is labeled for ages 3-5. It retails for $19.99. Thomas & Friends: Special Delivery will operate on computers running Windows XP or Vista with 256mb of free ram and a Direct X 9 compatible video card.

The generous folks at Brighter Minds Media have been generous enough to offer two copies of this game, Thomas & Friends: Special Delivery, to my readers for this giveaway. To enter, visit the Brighter Minds Media website. (While you’re there, you might want to check out the Brighter Minds Media Contests site too.) Then come back here and leave a comment telling me who you’d give this game to if you won and what other game (besides Thomas) you’re interested in from the Brighter Minds Media website. Only comments containing this information will be entered into the drawing. For an extra entry write about this giveaway on your blog, linking to the Brighter Minds Media website and this post. Giveaway ends at 11:59pm est on Saturday 09/06/08. Winners will be chosen at random. The winner must contact me within 72 hours to confirm they wish to receive the prize. US addresses only please. Good luck to all!

THIS GIVEAWAY HAS ENDED.