Word Rescue is an educational game from Apogee. The meaning of the game is to grab letters to make words of it, and meanwhile you'll have to avoid the enemies. No, you don't have to kill them, you have to avoid them. If you would have to kill them it won't be a educational game anymore... It's not really fun to play, but if you're three years old it must be big fun.
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Reviewer: Dos-Games-Online Rare it is indeed to find a game that falls into the category of edutainment and is still actually fun instead of just a lesson in tedium. Word Rescue, however, is the exception to the rule and features some great skill building tasks wrapped into an odd little plot with some fun characters. Word Rescue was developed by Redwood Games and was released for play on DOS by Apogee Software in the early nineties. It is a platform game of the side scrolling nature. The premise of the game involves helping a huge worm save words (hence the title) while helping kids (and sometimes adults) to build up their vocabulary skills.
In the world of Word Rescue are creatures called Gruzzles who are sadly illiterate. Embarrassed by this fact, and laced with a natural mean streak, the Gruzzles have disallowed reading within the land and are stealing words out of the books. The user plays the part of either a young boy or a young girl who must help Benny Bookworm to recover the words and put them back into the books from which they were stolen. In order to this, the user must match the words with their meanings (generally in the form of pictures) to make sure that Benny puts the words in the rights places.
There are three episodes in the full version of the game. The first one takes the user to Gruzzleville and its Castle, the second sees the user and Benny in the GruzzleBad Caverns, and the final episode takes the heroes to a spooky haunted house. The game is set up like a platform game, and simple words and pictures are located throughout the mazes of each game. The user must match the words with their pictures, while successfully avoiding the dangers and traps in each level. There will be waterfalls, fire, dripping slime, bottomless pits, and of course the Gruzzles are always at large and trying to stop you. Once the player matches all seven words to their meanings, Benny gathers them and turns them into a key, which will open the entrance to the next level.
Word Rescue features mostly very simplistic words, such as hat or purple. It is obviously geared toward younger children, probably around the ages of six or eight. It is a great educational tool that can help children to match words and meanings, and can also improve spelling by familiarizing them with the proper way to spell words. Download Word Rescue 1 - wordrescue1.zip
