Producer: Sinclair/Macmillan (Science Horizon Series)
Retail Price: £7.95
Age Range: Upper primary
Author: Five Ways

The programs in the Science Horizons series each concentrate on one key scientific idea and try to bring it alive for primary children. Survival is concerned with the basic principles of ecology (the interdependence of living things and their environment). When the program has loaded, pictures of six creatures (hawk, robin, lion, mouse, fly and butterfly) appear on the screen. The player chooses one of them, and has to keep it alive in its habitat by finding food and water and by steering clear of predators. A grid represents the world in map form, with ice caps to the north and south, and the player moves the chosen animal around, one square at a time. As the game progresses, the child will be building up a profile of each creature, based on the knowledge acquired about its energy requirements, predators, life span and so on.

The useful booklet which is included in the package gives brief notes about the six animals, but of course children could be directed towards reference books to increase their knowledge.

COMMENTS

Control keys: T, Y, U, G, J, B, N, M move the animal round the grid, P to pause, C to continue, Q to switch sound off/on, K to see a key for the habitats, SPACE to speed up the action
Keyboard play: responsive
Use of colour: attractive
Graphics: quite good
Panel's comments: We quite liked it, but it was hard to remember the control keys. We learned a lot about the animals.