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 Awwww.... Look at the cute wittle pengwins and cute wittle cwitters. Look how they play in the snow and frolic happily! What ten year old girl wouldn't love this game?
Thats what I thought when I bought a copy of this game for my niece a couple months ago. This past Sunday night I saw her again and asked how the game was going. You see, as cute as this game is, it's also ridiculously fun. In fact, I have a copy myself. Every so often, though, I get frustrated by the cutesy little characters, they can be remarkably uncooperative when they want to be. I thought that perhaps my aggression stemmed from the fact that I mostly play games in which the solution to almost any problem starts with me pulling a trigger, and ends with the problem spraying against a nearby wall.
I thought wrong.
Here, as best as I can remember, is a transcript of the conversation I had with this sweet little girl.
Me: "Hey, how far along are you towards paying off your house in the game?"
Niece: "Not very far, I don't know how to get more money."
Me: "Oh! Your clock is set wrong, here, let me fix that."
Niece: "Thanks! Now what can I sell?"
Me: "Pretty much anything you want, you can always buy it back later if you decide you need it. But I wouldn't sell those, they aren't worth much."
Niece: "Oh, what are they?"
Me: "They are called pitfall seeds. You plant them as a joke and other characters trip when they walk over them."
Niece: "Ugh! I've stepped on those, they make me mad..."
Me: "Yeah, they suck, but if you put them in an envelope and send them to the other characters in the game, sometimes they will send you a present back, so they are good for something at least!"
Niece: "Really? I'll try that!"
Me: "Yeah, it's a good way to get more money."
 Niece:
"Can you send other things? Because I want to send a bomb to that tiger guy, I HATE him."
And there it was. Even though she only plays wholesome games where cooperation and goodwill are the norm, games where you raise puppies and hold hands and everyone loves each other, the seed of destruction lies dormant. It brought a little tear to my eye. I figure in a couple years she'll be fragging you bastiches online and making me proud, wall jumping over you noobs and reducing you to puddles of quivering red jelly. Because if she's willing to get all unibomber on a cutesy little tiger's ass, just imagine what she'd do to someone who actually posed a threat!
My niece, age 5
My niece, age 10
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