Microbes Attack!

By Daddy-O Productions
Price $14.99
Age 6+

Are Microbes Attack puzzles fun? Let us count the ways . . . first, there's the cleverness of the concept. Puzzles are solved by placing colored microbes in a petri dish (not a real one, of course, but still way cool), and the colored microbe pieces and dish are so ingeniously designed and shaped that merely arranging them when you've been told exactly where they go is pretty big fun. In fact, it's hard not to feel proud of yourself, even when solving puzzles from levels 1, 2, or 3 (out of 8 levels of difficulty), where you're filling in a fairly small area of empty space. That's how it works. The puzzle book shows you where to put some of the pieces and your job is to fill in the empty space with the remaining pieces so that there are no gaps. Doing so is made trickier by the oddness of the shapes and the fact that 6 of the 12 microbes are quite different in terms of where they'll fit depending on which side is face up. But that's actually a big part of the gratification - the twisting and turning and visualizing and fitting. These microbes are fun to touch, and when they slide snugly into place, well, it's a darn good feeling. There are well over 100 puzzles to solve, and for those of you whose brains have gotten really big from playing with the microbes, just keep working your way up through the levels - those challenge problems are nothing to sneeze at!