MSB Ocean: How to Play the Games (151507)

SUMMARY

This article discusses how to play the games included with Magic School Bus Explores the Ocean (MSB Ocean).

Each ocean area has a game associated with it. The games can be found by exploring each of the areas. By clicking on the particular animal or plant that triggers the game you are taken to an offshoot of the current screen, where the game is played. The games can also be accessed from the back of the bus. Although the games' primary goal is to entertain, each game also reinforces a key concept for the area in which it is presented.

GAME DESCRIPTIONS

Crab Race - The Sandy Beach

The crab race game is a hand and eye coordination game, featuring Clarence the Crab. The game starts with a closeup view of the beach. Your crab is near the water. Clams are scattered around on the beach. In the sky, flying overhead, are sea gulls. The object of the game is to race the crab to its food (the clams) while preventing the sea gulls from eating the crab, by hiding in the sand. You control the running and burrowing of the crab by clicking with the mouse. For each "beach" completed, you are awarded a Fish Card.

Ride the Tide - The Tide Pools

This game shows how fish are affected by the tides. On the bottom half of the screen you control a fish, making it swim along the intertidal zone to find food. You control the fish and decide whether to advance it, stop it, or make it jump. The fish's movement in the water occurs while the tide is changing from high to low and back again. The game ends if the fish gets trapped in a dry tidepool, or gets its food and leaves the screen. Win Fish Cards along the way.

Kelp Diving - The Kelp Forest

Keesha is in the Kelp forest with a trash bag on her back. The goal in this game is to help Keesha collect as much trash as possible. To pick up the trash, move Keesha to the object and click. If the trash hits a sea creature, the creature disappears.

Maze of Coral - The Coral Reef

The object of this game is to guide Shannon Shark through a complex maze of coral. During the race you collect objects. To win, you must find your way out of the maze.

Food Chain Puzzle - The Open Ocean

This game presents the concept of which animals eat which animals by putting together puzzle pieces of a particular open ocean animal. The next puzzle to be solved is the animal that eats the one you just created.

The Luminous Game - The Deep Ocean

In this game, you control a hatchetfish in the dark of the deep ocean. The screen is filled with lights made by other creatures found in the deep sea. Some of these fish are the enemies of the hatchet. You have to click on the configuration of lights to find friendly fish. If you click on a friendly fish, the hatchet continues its journey to collect food. If you click on the wrong fish, the hatchetfish is eaten and you have to start again. The goal of the game is for the hatchetfish to finish its journey alive.

Viper Feeder - The Deep Sea Vents

In this game, you guide a viperfish, Stealth, in his quest for food (lantern fish). But Stealth doesn't have a lot of energy to spare, you must therefore develop a strategy for catching the most fish by moving the least.