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Freddi Fish 2: The Case of The Haunted Schoolhouse
 This is the second title in this underwater mystery series for young children featuring the 'super sleuths' Freddi Fish and Luther. It's absolutely delightful with bright, colourful graphics and animations, a good number of wondrous locations to explore, catchy music and sound effects, and lots of things to see and do.
In this adventure Freddi and Luther are on the trail of the mysterious ghost who is 'scaring the scales' off the young guppies in the schoolhouse and making off with their treasured toys. It's a theme that is bound to entertain the target audience (children between the ages of three and eight) with its spine tingling plot, although very early in the piece all suggestion of anything too sinister is quickly dispelled. It really is just all fun and games featuring two irresistible characters who can't fail to capture young players' hearts with their entertaining escapades. Only the Squid Father and his helpers get any bad press in this story and even they are treated mercifully in the end.
The Case of the Haunted Schoolhouse is an adventure game where the young player is invited to aid Freddi and Luther in their quest for the ghost, and to do this the player must gather the necessary items to construct a trap. Delightfully these items are not just there for the taking as, in the true spirit of adventure game playing, each one presents a problem to be overcome whether it must be extricated from its owner or from its hiding place in the game world. This means that yet more items must be collected and used to solve the problem. For instance, various game characters will ask for 'payment ' in exchange for a much a needed item, or it may be out of reach, or simply stuck fast in its position requiring some implement to get hold of it. None of the problems are too difficult, although parents might have to offer a word or two of advice to players at the lower end of the recommended age group.
Along the way there are numerous objects to click on to initiate animations, as well as a blackboard for young artists to spend some time drawing pictures and a 'crab invaders' game where the object is to squirt water at the crabs and knock them off their perch. There are also a number of quirky characters with a joke, or a tale to tell, or a song to sing.
Not only is this one an entertaining game, but also it demands to be replayed over and over as some of the quest items are randomly placed and some of the essential pieces of the trap device will change from game to game thus presenting different problems to solve. But I imagine that young players would delight in returning to it even without this built-in replayability.
Freddi Fish 2: The Case of the Haunted Schoolhouse comprises one CD and plays directly from the disk. It is all point and click with intuitive gameplay making it very playable for younger children. It's absolutely captivating, and with its problem solving dimensions it is surely a perfect training ground for budding young adventurers. I only wish that the writers had considered including a text option for the dialogue. Not only would this serve to help young players with their reading skills, but it would also invite hearing impaired children to join in the fun.
Copyright © Rosemary Young 1997.
All rights reserved.
System requirements:
Windows : 486/33 (or faster), 8 MB RAM, Win 3.1 or Win 95, SVGA (640 x 480 colours), sound card, 2x CD ROM (or faster).
Macintosh : 68040 (25 MHz or faster), 8 MB RAM, 2x CD ROM (or faster), 256 colour video display
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