Fatworld, created by Persuasive Games, is a game about teaching people the importance of nutrition. It does this by allowing the player freedom within a limited world to do what they please, including choosing what they eat and how they exercise.

As the player you play one day of game time per session. In between these sessions your character ages depending on your settings (by default one year, but it can be more). This means that all effects of eating and exercise are exaggerated. Every time you play again, your character has maintained the same level of health that you did while playing that single day and you're able to see the effects right away.

Fatworld is a fun game and will probably be able to hold the attention of younger children, but I found it repetitive after a while. The music is good, however, the mouse-over sound effects become quickly annoying. It plays every time you pass your cursor over a clickable object. The graphics work well with the game. They are colorful and maintain a coherent cartoony style.

The in-game tutorial system is very nice and explains thoroughly what the player needs to do. A context-sensitive help system is available at all times in case the player doesn't understand what to do. Overall, the help was top-notch. The only missing piece of information were the details about the time advancement system -- the tutorial never explained how it worked.

Another surprising lack of a feature was that the player isn't able to eat at other restaurants. I had hoped I could have my character eat fast food every meal for a year and see how that would affect him, but I wasn't able to. The character can still eat a triple-bacon-ranch cheeseburger for breakfast, but he has to make it himself.

The game didn't run as well as I thought it should have, but that was probably because it was made in Flash. Still, for the simple graphics it has, I didn't expect any issues; however, I experienced slowdown on several occasions. The map also doesn't follow the character as well as I would have liked, and several times my character was hidden behind the user interface. I also ran across a bug where, after entering a grocery store and not making a purchase, I had infinite money. This is a pretty serious bug, of course, and would probably break the game for younger children after the novelty of buying five mansions wore off.

I felt that once the tutorial had finished I was rather lost motivationally. I wish the game had given me some smaller goals to keep me moving and doing something with my character. I also felt that the political portion of the game wasn't as fleshed out as it ought to be. In order to do anything politically, you go to a magic politics booth and bribe politicians to ban certain food types as well as to cheapen others. You can also vote on tax changes. The only reason to bother with this stuff is to be able to affect other members of your Fatworld.

Multiple players can exist in a single Fatworld (but not play at the same time) and can affect each other. If I were to use one of my characters to bribe a politician and ban vegetables, none of the other players can buy vegetables. Beyond that, there doesn't seem to be a lot of reason to using politics -- there is little or no personal gain.

Fatworld has a lot to teach and does so in a good way (by being detrimental to your character); but I think that it needs to improve the underlying game play before it will be engrossing enough to hold my attention long enough to teach me. That said, I think younger kids may really enjoy Fatworld; and it should be demonstrative enough to show them the effects of eating poorly, especially at a time when it's important to develop good eating habits.

• ITS Sitemap
• ITS Services A-Z
• Contact Us