Tatiana, Cinderella's Fairy Godmother's apprentice, has inadvertently trapped Cinderella in a storybook in one of her castles. In order to free her, players can help by decorating her castles, which will uncover magical jewels which Tatiana can use to free Cinderella.
Cinderella's Castle Designer is a creativity title for young children that uses "stickers" to decorate five different castles inside and out. Kids can not only choose from hundreds of accessories, they can also change the patterns and colors of the accessories and even the walls and floors. Everything is in 3D, and the view can be scrolled horizontally and vertically.
The graphics are gorgeous, and the 3D scrolling works very well. Children can click on Tatiana, who hovers in the air, to change the set viewpoints and also manually pan the rooms up, down and across. The accessories are chosen by first selecting the type of items from the bottom menu, and then choosing the particular kind of item in that category by dragging the item to any spot in the room. The item can be rotated, but not resized. Patterns and colors can be changed, as well.
On starting the program, The Fairy Godmother describes the various functions of the interface items. Unfortunately, it's hard to understand her high-pitched voice against the background music, so children may not catch exactly what they need to do. There is a help file that describes the game very well, but this e-manual isn't accessible from the game itself and can only be opened from the program manager, so kids would have to leave the game to access it.
The interface is not very intuitive, and clicking the items to "stick" to the cursor until dropping would have worked better for younger players than dragging, as most kids are used to sticker/stamps that are clicked on, rather than dragged. If a child forgets to drag, the item is hidden under the menu while the Fairy Godmother just says that it won't work there. Items can be moved around from their original placements, and there is also a button that will delete unwanted accessories. If desired, a magic wand will decorate the room for the child, item by item.
Each of these castles and accompanying accessories, while pastel in tone, are drawn to be realistic. The furniture and other accessories all look like the real thing, rather than cartoony stamps. The result is very nice, but also slightly cold and austere in tone, almost as if drawn for adults rather than for little kids.
Once all the castles are decorated, then it's time to hunt for the five jewels that are hidden in each of them. They are hidden, maybe behind furniture or other items. Tatiana, Cinderella and The Fairy Godmother will all give helpful clues. When all of the jewels are found, Cinderella is free.
Creativity games that use stamps/stickers to decorate can be a lot of fun, and I have very fond memories of a colorform game I had when very young that featured lots of food stickers. I literally played with it for hours. Cinderella's Castle Designer, while attractive, just doesn't capture that same sense of fun for some reason, mostly because of the type of stamps available and the limited choices for placement. Older girls will appreciate the more realistic look than their younger counterparts, but will tire quickly of the game as it doesn't offer much besides decorating. A brighter, more "cartoony" appearance might have worked better for the target age group of five and up.
