Big Thinkers! 1st Grade

The Good
This is the second and last game in the Big Thinkers! series, although perhaps that's not the most accurate way to put it, given that both were developed and released simultaneously. So Humongous Entertainment didn't have any time to learn from the other game's flaws. Despite that, this is arguably still the better of the two, although not by a huge margin.

The game follows the exact same formula as its counterpart. That is to say, it's a story-free game with a small hub world that exists almost exclusively for the sake of various activities hosted by shapeshifting teenagers Ben and Becky. Success in them rewards you with varying types and amounts of SmartStars, which can be used as a currency to participate in a special activity and earn SuperStars of Smarts.

The average quality of the activities is a bit higher. Thanks to being aimed at a slightly older target demographic, some of them have a level of mechanical complexity that just wasn't there before. A handful can actually be considered legitimate puzzle games, rather than just educational exercises or toys.

The graphics are of the same quality as last time. Ben and Becky's large arsenal of surreal forms once again helps give them a distinct charm of their own, which is complemented by some nice backgrounds, but also undermined somewhat by some less polished sprites. With one exception, the locations you visit are all the same, but a lot of the details differ, so they don't feel like too much of a rehash.

The Bad
The soundtrack on the other hand is indeed a rehash. It does admittedly have a few different tracks, but it's otherwise the exact same fairly average kids' game soundtrack as what kindergartners got to hear.

And the majority of the activities are still rather typical examples of the edutainment genre. Decently well-presented for the most part, but ultimately just chocolate-flavored broccoli. They're certainly educational, but not particularly fun to play. They get old pretty fast, yet you still have to play many of them for a very long time before they start to mix things up by increasing the difficulty. Though I'm not too harsh on this, seeing how you can adjust it yourself.

There is also a bizarre factual error in the letter-sorting activity. When it tasks you with sorting food-related letters, it'll often ask you to put a letter about eggs in the appropriate food group. The problem is that eggs don't really fit in any of the four options provided. It expects you to place it in the category for meat and fish, which is obviously incorrect.

The Bottom Line
All in all, this title is superior to its sister game thanks to a few legitimately decent activities. But most of it is of the same quality. So overall, it's just another solid, yet unremarkable effort.

This marks the end of the Big Thinkers! series. It's not hard to see why these games are rarely brought up in conversations about Humongous Entertainment. In addition to their poor commercial performance, they're ultimately just fairly typical edutainment games. Despite all this, I wouldn't go as far as to say that Big Thinkers! is just a footnote in the company's history. It did lay the groundwork for their next effort in the realm of conventional edutainment, which would prove to be more successful. But that's a story for another day.