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Content - 5 stars / Presentation - 2 stars

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: January 06, 2007
Author: Amazon User

There are wonderful Stephen Biesty colored drawings here. But, as with the Stowaway! cd, the screen size is non-resizable 4" x 6" rather than the 11" x 14" printed version. So, you start out with a major disadvantage in the limited viewing space. DK should have made this a full-screen program. Unfortunately the small screen area is highlighted by the fact that the Castle Explorer program screen is surrounded by your regular windows wallpaper/icon background. You might want to open a wordprocessing program with a blank document to frame Castle Explorer in a non-busy background.

The first screen is the Castle Guide with a fuzzy overall view of the castle complex. You can either click on part of the complex or choose one of ten castle cross-sections described in two columns on either side of the castle complex drawing. That takes you to a color cross-section with some detail of that castle section. You can then click on a portion of the cross-section and get a close up. There is scrolling capability here to move around the entire section through mouse movement. You can click on various parts of the close up and get a short text description of what goes on there and there are some portions you uncover with your mouse. You click outside the drawing area to move back to the castle section screen to choose another portion of the castle section to look at.

What should be a neat feature, scrolling with the mouse to the desired point, was a frustration. The mouse action is too quick, and it's hard to get to the chosen location without overrunning it. I didn't try slowing our computer mouse action parameters down because I didn't want to have to reset the mouse every time I entered and left the program. But, that might work in making the scrolling feature more useful.

In some sections there are 3D rooms you can explore in an east-west direction. This is kind of neat and you move around the room and into specific areas and activities by mouse click. You get out of the room by finding the door you came in and clicking on it. Otherwise you need to go back to the opening Castle Guide scene and start navigating again.

The print option has the same problems as the Stowaway! cd. You can't size or edit the color images and the resolution is poorer than the screen image. But, there is a make posters option which allows printing/editing of good black and white quality drawings. Printing these out and taping them together can give the overall, indepth view of castle life that is impossible with the program itself because of its 4x6 screen view.

Installation problems: Install on Windows XP option didn't work for me. It did install when I chose the install on 95/98/ME/2000 option. After installing, you may not be able to run the program and get a warning that your sound software is not properly installed if you are using XP SP2. The fix is at http://www.learnatglobal.com under tech support and issues with Windows XP. You may have to run the sound fix from the online prompt rather than saving it and running it. I couldn't get it to install from my saved version. Also, even though I have Quick Time for Windows installed, I get an error message at start up on needing to install it. But, I just click OK, and the program starts fine.

This could be a great program. The Biesty drawings and detail, the animation, the information--all add up to a top notch program. But, the software execution makes the viewing/playing experience frustrating. And the small screen version is just about as wonderful as watching a dvd movie on an onscreen player that has a 2" x 3" window. The content may be great, but the presentation is painful to watch.

I feel like saying "buy the book". That's the best way to view Biesty's drawings. But, even though the program does a poor job at presenting the castle cross-section drawings, the 3D rooms are neat and give the program a little extra the book doesn't have.

Disappointing - wouldn't work

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: January 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User

We were unable to succesfully install the Castle Explorer program on either of our two home computers despite muddling through the 20+ page "Read Me" troubleshooting document included. Our family has installed many children's computer games in the past and has never encountered this problem before.

My 8 y/o son had been looking forward to playing Castle Explorer (the description sounds pretty cool) and was understandably disappointed that we couldn't get it running.

Can't recommend this game.

1 microscopic dot, not 1 star

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: February 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The game simply does not work. We tried loading it on all five home computers (two desktops & three laptops), none worked. Amazon was good about replacing it, but the new copy would not play either. I took it to the office to have our computer geek load it and he could not make it work. Take your chance if you wish, but you've been warned.

Software doesn't work

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: January 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I was not able to install this game on either of 2 computers running XP.
On the companies tech support page there is a patch to download but my children's computer is not connected to the internet and when I tried to download to my computer it would not run.

Review Page: 1 

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