Gary Gadget: Building Cars offers almost everything a budding grease monkey could want. It not only lets you build a car, it also lets you drive it; you can zoom around the local countryside, and even enter your car in an auto show.

Gary Gadget lives in a quiet spot at the end of a road with his Boxer, Bouncer and a junkyard full of whatchamacallits, thingamabobs and doodads. Through the use of a point-and-click interface, you can explore Gary's garage and junkyard. You can gather up anything that strikes your fancy in the junkyard and toss it into the garage, but be careful not to get too carried away with your collection or you may find it difficult to sort through all the clutter. You don't have totally free rein when it comes to designing your car, though -- if you try to add a part that doesn't logically fit, the game won't allow it.

Once you finish building your car, you can take it for a spin (via an aerial map) and visit your neighbors. You can navigate the roads by using the arrow keys or by clicking and dragging the mouse pointer (which turns into a steering wheel) in the direction you want to go; we find both methods to be awkward.

Designing a car is harder than you might think. You may find that your creation looks good but is a poor fit with certain road conditions, which means you'll have to go back to the garage and do a little more tinkering. There aren't many choices of parts at first, but you can gather more as you work your way through the game.

Gary Gadget: Building Cars is a simple but engaging game that offers interesting and fun challenges for younger kids who like to tinker.


Pros: Provides many hours of fun and creative challenges, colorful storybook-style graphics, good replay value
Cons: Help and instructions are a little sketchy for kids who aren't already mechanically inclined, comments from Gary can be repetitive, small activity window, no full-screen option