Video gaming’s most famous mother, Cooking Mama, has done such a good job cooking, gardening, crafting, and babysitting (all games in the series), that Papa has decided she needs a vacation. Join Mama and Papa for more touch screen mini-game fun in the great outdoors with Camping Mama: Outdoor Adventures for Nintendo DS.

There are four modes when starting the game. ‘Explore’ is the main adventure mode (more on that later). You can also play each mini-game you’ve unlocked separately in ‘Challenge’ mode. Select ‘Books’ to view what camping equipment you’ve unlocked, what fish and insects you’ve caught, and what camping food you’ve cooked. In ‘Options’ mode you can play a couple of multiplayer wireless camping games, erase data, or view the credits.

In the main adventure mode, you play as girl Ichigo or boy Ringo as you help Mama and Papa have fun camping. Each stage is viewed in an overhead perspective and you guide the kids around with the stylus. Try to avoid wild animals, as running into them will make you lose a heart. Lose all hearts and you must start over. But don’t worry; it’s easy to find hearts by shaking trees, pulling up grass, winning games, or finding treasure boxes.

By exploring each overhead area, you’ll find other treasures to decorate the campsite with, as well as dress up Mama and Papa. At the end of each level, Mama or Papa will have a mini-game for you that’s similar to the touch screen challenges in other Mama games. While you are exploring, you may encounter other mini-games by running into animals, shaking trees, or reading signposts. In this way, Camping Mama has slight RPG elements to it.

Mini-games include fishing, whittling a slingshot, catching butterflies, helping animals, picking fruit, and other outdoor activities. It wouldn’t be a Mama game without cooking some food, and here you’ll prepare S’mores, grill fish, barbecue shish-ka-bob, and more. The games use the stylus and touch screen, and sometimes even the microphone.

Since you do have to complete an overhead area before saving, Camping Mama doesn’t have quite the pick-up-and-playability as other Mama games had in the past. But the levels are still pretty short, and it’s a nice change of pace from previous games. Another problem this and other Mama games have had is there are a couple of mini-games that aren’t quite as easy to figure out. But if you are a fan of Cooking Mama games, then Camping Mama is definitely worth a look, too.

Kid Factor:

Camping Mama: Outdoor Adventures is rated E for Everyone with an ESRB descriptor of Comic Mischief. But the game isn’t violent at all. When you run into an animal, your character just says “ouch” and that’s it. The game could be considered somewhat educational, as several of the mini-games enforce color and shape matching, classification, and recognition. Reading skill is a must, as pre-game instructions are entirely in text (and a little hard to read because of that awful “Mama” font). A few of the overhead stages and mini-games may be tough for very young gamers to navigate, and they may need help from older players. But other than that, this is a great game for little campers.

Tags: Game Reviews