I Spy Fantasy (Windows, Mac)

As with all I Spy software and books, I SPY FANTASY is about solving visual riddles -- kids look at crowded pictures to find camouflaged surprises. At the bottom of each screen is a rhyming riddle that tells children what to search for in the picture. As children succeed at finding the objects, the riddle words change color to reflect that they've been found.

The game opens to a child's room where clicking on the aquarium leads to an underwater adventure, the sand toys lead to an adventure in a medieval castle, and the rocket ship takes players on an adventure in outer space. Kids find the puzzles by moving their cursor over the landscapes until they find something that animates. Some are set in unusual places, including a dark cave where the cursor becomes a flashlight.

I Spy Fantasy offers lots of replayability because the three adventures can be worked through on three levels of difficulty.

In solving the 54 puzzles, children expand their vocabularies. The nature of these puzzles encourages cooperative play.