Animal Vegetable Mineral

The Good
Back in the very early 1980's when I was a COBOL programmer, we got a new computer. It was a PDP 11/44 and it came with some games pre-installed, this was one of those games so finding it had been released on the Amstrad a few years later was a surprise and a walk down memory lane.
We played this in the office and it was considered an educational game that taught us programmers about the 'tree database structure'. It was a lot of fun for a very short while, mainly because whenever anyone came to the game the questions and responses were different because the game had evolved. One player with an interest in birds taught the game the difference between a raven, a crow, a rook and a jackdaw - it's to do with the colour of their beaks and feet if I remember correctly.
Then as players started inputting data about tits, both the feathered and non feathered variety and management had the game deleted. However while it was there it was fun and thought provoking...

• How do you get the game to tell the difference between a twig and a branch?
• A leaf can change colour so how do you structure the database to deal with that?

... and by getting us to think about such things I guess it achieved its objective.

The Bad
As a single player game it's pointless and boring. The game only knows what you have entered and therefore holds no surprises.

It's also very surprising that the game takes so long to load yet has such a small database to start with.

The Bottom Line
Pointless as a single player game and if you have any friends you're better off getting together for a drink or two and playing the party game, that's much more fun.