Review Didi & Ditto: Mother Nature's Visit Developer: Kutoka Publisher: Kutoka Genre: Adventure Release Date: December 2008 Platform: Review by Lia & her Pappy Randy Sluganski February 24, 2009		Buy this game at Trade for this game at:

Lia (pronounced Lee-ah), my just turned 2-years-old granddaughter, has been playing at my computer keyboard since she was six months old. Actually, she wasn’t playing so much as she was banging on it, so a few months back I purchased a Sesame Street First Steps game that required her to press keys which in turn caused Elmo or Big Bird to sing a song. A simple cause-and-effect concept that she seemed to grasp.

So when Kutoka asked if we would review their newest Didi & Ditto game, I asked Lia if she would be interested to which she shook her head yes and replied “uh” (She says “uh” a lot).

Now, for those of you not in the know, Didi & Ditto are twin brother and sister. Oh yeah, they’re also beavers. And they’re busy preparing a reception for a visit from Mother Nature, but Zolt, a sneaky wolf, is trying to be a party-pooper by hiding all of the food and breaking the town’s musical instruments.

The first thing you must do is decide whether you want to play as Ditto, the red female beaver, or Didi, the blue male beaver. I wanted to play as Didi, but Lia was insistent and kept pointing at Ditto. Lia won the argument. She wins all of our arguments. How does a 2-year old continually best me?

Now this is where pappy made a fundamental mistake and chose to play the game in adventure mode. While the adventure mode is fun, it is also beyond the comprehension of a 2-year-old and it wasn’t long until we started over, this time choosing to play just the activities. It should be noted that there are three difficulty levels to choose from before play begins and we, of course, chose to begin with level one so as not to make me look too foolish.

While there is a forest full of colorful and whimsical animal characters to interact with, the biggest challenge I found was teaching Lia to use the mouse in a constructive manner. This does require some patience, but it is eventually rewarding to realize that she is beginning to grasp the relationship between her control of the mouse and how it affects events on the screen. To be honest, it took a few sessions over a couple of weeks, but was well worth the effort. She also recognizes her name on the save game and knows to click on it when we revisit the game and I’m sure it won’t be long now until we’re able to enjoy the story aspect of the game.

The activities are varied enough to hold both of our interests and there are occasionally some surprise animations that Lia seems to take a great joy in finding and her laughter at these makes me laugh and really, what more could you ask for?

We’ve not finished the game yet and probably won’t for some time as pappy has a short attention span and often wanders away to watch Wow, Wow Wubbzy or chase our cats Chaplin and Squeakers around the house, but it’s nice to know that whenever we are ready, Didi & Ditto will be waiting to play with us again.

System Requirements:

PC

• Windows XP, Vista
• Processor: Pentium 1 GHz
• RAM: 512 MB
• Video and Sound: DirectX 9
• DVD-ROM: 4X
• Hard disk space: 1.1 GB

Mac

• Mac OS X 10.4, 10.5
• Processor: G4 - 1 GHz
• RAM: 512 MB
• Video and Sound: Standard Mac
• DVD-ROM: 4X
• Hard disk space: 1.1 GB