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Overview
CJ's Closet is both a safe game and a safe online community for
children. The game is CJ's Closet and the online portioin is called
CJ's Clubhouse. Dreamed up by Kay Productions, CJ's is their attempt
to bring high quality family oriented games and a safe internet
site for kids. Huzzah! Did they do good? Let's find out.
CJ's Closet
I've been looking over their Demo CD along with my kids for the
last few weeks. I have two kids in the targeted age group, a daughter
and a son. Actually, my son is barely too old and my daughter hits
the upper age range for the CD. However, I did get some good insight
into the possibilities of CJ's as a whole.
The CD offers a wide range of games oriented to children and specificially
meant to be safe for anyone to play. You won't find any violence
or blood on this CD. While this defninely limits the overall appeal
of the product, that's the point. CJ's fills a need for something
that's of high quality and yet doesn't require you to blow someone
to pieces. Good, safe, family oriented fun and stories with biblical
themes. That's what they set out to do and from what I can see in
the Dem and from the reactions of my children, they achieved it
nicely.
What remains to be seen is whether the entire concept will be appealing
enough to keep children interested long enough to make CJ's a hit.
However, there really isn't anything on the Christian market like
it. Veggie Tales, you'd think would have done something by now,
but I've yet to see anything from them. There are plenty of secular
games out there oriented to kids but really there's nothing in the
Christian market. The people behind Kay Productions saw this and
are making a solid attempt to meet this need.
The game consists of a series of activities, puzzles and stories.
The Demo came with one story, one game and two puzzles. The final
CD will have four stories, several games and additional puzzles.
The story was about forgivness but it was clear that besides teaching
a moral, the story contained several teaching elements. As you read
through the story, you run into some problems that require you to
pick a solution. For instance, you are confronted by a stream and
must choose the best way get across. The right answer moves the
story along. None of the puzzles are overly hard but they do require
a bit of thinking to figure out which answer makes sense.
The game is a balloon toss shooting gallery. You throw water baloons
at cutout figures that move across the screen. This activity was
what consumed most of my kid's time playing the CD. The puzzles
consisted of a jigsaw puzzle and a sliding puzzle.
The activities on the CD are all well done and smoothly animated.
There wasn't anything truly inovative or different from anything
else I've seen. However, they are all quite appropriate for Children
and well done. The real question in my mind is whether the final
CD will have enough activities to keep Children occupied for more
than a few hours.
In fact, this is the main difficulty with children's CDs. The replay
value isn't nearly as solid as the action games. Once you've read
a story five or six times, it's going to be the same story the seventh
time. The interactive and "choose your own adventure"
approach to story telling on the computer has a great deal of promise.
CJ's does what is expected of a Childrens' story. I'd personally
like to see some more innovation in this area.
Of all the things on the CJ's CD, I kept wanting the stories to
be more interactive, more involved. IE. instead of a linear story
where you click on the "turn the page" button, it'd be
more interesting to me to have the story unfold depending on the
interaction the child would have with the screen. For instace, if
the child clicks on a character in the story, they learn something
about that character and perhaps that launches them into an adventure
story that might be unrelated to the original story line. And if
they clicked on a horse, then perhaps that leads them to another
town and another set of stories.
I'm probably asking for too much here and it's possibly not the
right approach for children, but the possibilities and promise for
greater interaction keeps me wanting more and I think the limited
replay value of such interactive stories is proof that we need to
see more inovation here. There's nothing wrong with the way CJ's
Closet approaches doing their stories. It's pretty standard, in
fact and what I'm suggesting might be too confusing for children
of the age CJ's is directed toward...maybe...but I suspect it's
not.
CJ's Clubhouse (Not
just for kids)
This
is the part of the CD that really interested me. This, I think has
great possibilities that expand the value of the CD. The Clubhouse
is a "safe" online website. I put "safe" in
quotes not because there's anything unsafe about CJ's but because
the internet is unsafe and no matter how safe CJ's Clubhouse is,
it's still the internet.
I
say this because parents will still want to monitor what their kids
are involved with even if they are only going to the Clubhouse.
Common sense. I'm a big proponent of online activities. I think
Christians should have a huge presence on the web and CJ's is a
great example of doing something that promises to be of high quality
and provide a safe place for kids to enjoy and yet beneift from
this fantastic tool.
I
encourage my kids to be online. It is one of the greatest and best
learning tools ever devised. My kids are better readers, better
typists, more creative, better educated and more in tune with technology
because of the internet. However, there's a dark side to the internet.
You can't shield your kids completely from the dark side but I see
it like anything in life. It's an opportunity to teach my kids right
and wrong. And if they don't learn it and they choose to do the
wrong things on the internet then they lose that priviledge.
But
CJ's is a relative safe island on the internet and as such is a
great opportunity to provide your kids with many of the benefits
of being online and help make the risks manageable from a parent's
perspective. My daughter was very intersted in this section.
Parents and Teens
too?
Yep, they have a place for parents and teens. Parents and teens
can even keep their daily planner online here. It looks like they
are trying to make this a comprehensive website that will appeal
to everyone. I'm not sure how teens will like the idea of hanging
out in a place called CJ's Clubhouse. As of this writing, it's still
very much under construction.
Conclusions
It's
too soon to tell if CJ's is going to have enough content on the
CD and website to keep your child's interest for long. I am hopeful
that they'll pull it off. This looks like a talented group with
a clear notion of what they want to accomplish.
The
game is slated to sell for $19.95 which is a good price considering
that most new chidren's games sell for no less than $30. We're looking
forward to the full version and when it's released we'll be doing
a complete review.
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