ClueFinders 5th Grade Adventures: The Secret of the Living Volcano
released on Jun 29, 1999
A sudden tsunami has shipwrecked the ClueFinders on a volcanic island and Owen and Leslie have disappeared! Explore and learn the secrets of the island’s castaways to solve the mystery. Build reading & history, geography & maps, math & fractions, science & circuitry, vocabulary, language arts and more on this perilous journey across the island, under the sea and into the volcano! Then, mastermind a brilliant rescue before the volcano blows!
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Very similar to the 6th grade one in terms of difficulty, the game is very challenging. I never liked it - I found it creepy and excessively difficult. Even as an adult in my 30s, I still can't pass it. The graphics and sounds are quite disturbing to me, much like the 6th grade one. I may have potential dyscalculia, so certain parts of the game are too overwhelming for me. The shark wall, or whatever that place is called, drives me insane.
While the setting and idea for this installment of the ClueFinders series is generally neat, it feels even more confused than it's predecessors and particularly more rushed.
In the first game you had about four different sections with (this is me estimating without going back and checking) roughly 24 puzzles, in the second you had about three different sections with roughly 12 puzzles, and in this one you also have three different sections but with only 10 puzzles. While each game seems to be roughly the same length, they tend to get progressively tedious in the way they're artificially lengthened. This one seems to be the peak so far (meaning my replay of the series, obviously there are many more after this) in that regard, as I would have to go back and forth between the same two puzzles just to get enough unobtanium to solve the main puzzle for that section. The previous game having at least three puzzles you have to go back and forth between in each main section made a bigger difference than you'd think.
There are two reasons I can think that the series is progressing like this. My first thought was that they were under a bigger time crunch for each new game and didn't have the resources to make more puzzles to keep the games interesting. The other possible explanation, which I just thought of while writing this, is that because the puzzles were more challenging they expected kids to take longer to solve them and knew they wouldn't need as many to keep the length of the games consistent. That doesn't make as much sense though because the whole reason the puzzles are more challenging is because the education level is advancing, meaning this should be just as difficult for 5th graders as 3rd Grade Adventures is for 3rd Graders. Plus, as a 25-year-old, this didn't end up taking me much less time than 3rd Grade Adventures anyway, because they make you redo the few puzzles that are in this so many times. So I'm kind of circling back to thinking it was time/budget restraints.
Regardless of why, this is a clear downgrade in quality imo. Even the story, which is usually pretty random anyway, just felt kind of half-baked here. But maybe I wouldn't feel that way if the puzzles didn't seem to pad out this story that would otherwise feel rushed.
(6/10)
In the first game you had about four different sections with (this is me estimating without going back and checking) roughly 24 puzzles, in the second you had about three different sections with roughly 12 puzzles, and in this one you also have three different sections but with only 10 puzzles. While each game seems to be roughly the same length, they tend to get progressively tedious in the way they're artificially lengthened. This one seems to be the peak so far (meaning my replay of the series, obviously there are many more after this) in that regard, as I would have to go back and forth between the same two puzzles just to get enough unobtanium to solve the main puzzle for that section. The previous game having at least three puzzles you have to go back and forth between in each main section made a bigger difference than you'd think.
There are two reasons I can think that the series is progressing like this. My first thought was that they were under a bigger time crunch for each new game and didn't have the resources to make more puzzles to keep the games interesting. The other possible explanation, which I just thought of while writing this, is that because the puzzles were more challenging they expected kids to take longer to solve them and knew they wouldn't need as many to keep the length of the games consistent. That doesn't make as much sense though because the whole reason the puzzles are more challenging is because the education level is advancing, meaning this should be just as difficult for 5th graders as 3rd Grade Adventures is for 3rd Graders. Plus, as a 25-year-old, this didn't end up taking me much less time than 3rd Grade Adventures anyway, because they make you redo the few puzzles that are in this so many times. So I'm kind of circling back to thinking it was time/budget restraints.
Regardless of why, this is a clear downgrade in quality imo. Even the story, which is usually pretty random anyway, just felt kind of half-baked here. But maybe I wouldn't feel that way if the puzzles didn't seem to pad out this story that would otherwise feel rushed.
(6/10)