The ClueFinders 5th Grade Adventures: The Secret of the Living Volcano

The ClueFinders 5th Grade Adventures: The Secret of the Living Volcano
Developer(s)	The Learning Company
Publisher(s)	The Learning Company
Platform(s)	PC (Windows, Macintosh)
Release date(s)	1999
Genre(s)	Educational/adventure/science fiction/mystery
Mode(s)	Single player

The ClueFinders 5th grade Adventures: Secret of the Living Volcano is a personal computer game in The Learning Company's ClueFinders series of educational software. In the game, the ClueFinders are shipwrecked on a mysterious volcanic island, inhabited by centuries of trapped castaways, where any escape attempt seems to be deliberately thwarted by natural forces.

Voice cast

• Chrissie McCarron – Joni Savage
• Clayton Stroope – Santiago Rivera
• Keoni Asia Gist – Leslie Clark
• Brian Michael Gregory – Owen Lam
• Les Hedger – LapTrap
• Roger L. Jackson – The Big Face/Tobor (the spelling robot)
• Terry McGovern – Chicken Man/The Great CrypTile Thief
• Wally Fields – Manager Worm/Anemones/Tube/The Big Fish
• Becca Barnes – Charlotte No-Haira
• Duane Lawrence – Captain Clark
• Jackie Brambles – Lab5
• Andrew Kawamura – Sailor in crow's nest
• Jon Olsen – Eco (the computer within)

Premise

The ClueFinders are on a mission with Captain Clark, Leslie's sailor grandfather, to find out why so many ships have been disappearing in a certain area of the Pacific Ocean, à la the Bermuda Triangle. In one of the wrecked ships, Joni and Santiago discover a pair of metal plaques with strange symbols written on them. However, just when their own ship comes into view of a tiny uncharted island, a tsunami promptly forms and hits their ship.

Later, Joni and Santiago gain consciousness and find themselves stranded all alone, except for LapTrap, on the beach of the island with the wreck of Captain Clark's ship nearby. They make contact with Owen and Leslie via Santiago's red videophone, but the whereabouts of Captain Clark and the ship's crew remain unknown. Owen and Leslie, however, are trapped in an underground chamber that has walls coated with plaques similar to the ones that Joni and Santiago found earlier.

Making contact with the islanders, many of whom are descended from castaways stranded on the island hundreds of years ago, and English-speaking sea worms underwater, Joni and Santiago learn that the mysterious plaques are called CrypTiles. Both the islanders and the sea worms tell them that the island is "alive" and the islanders claim that the island has been purposefully impeding their attempts at escape for centuries. Santiago in particular is highly skeptical of the idea of a "living island," finding it unscientific, but is disturbed to find mounting evidence that something very sinister is happening on the island.

Gameplay

For the majority of the game, the player guides Joni, Santiago and LapTrap in and around the island as they attempt to rescue Owen and Leslie from the underground chamber as well as find a way to escape the adverse island. There are two areas that can be explored at the start of the game, the island itself and the ocean. At the end of the game, the user enters the interior of the island and learns its secrets.

The Island

Sulfur River

Before the rest of the island can be accessed, the user must build a bridge over a river of molten sulfur. The user is presented with several stone blocks to build the bridge with, each one having two polygons on it. These must be inserted into the bridge so that the touching polygons' number of sides match. An old man, listed in the credits as "Chicken Man", greets Joni and Santiago after they make it over the sulfur river and tells them they need to collect CrypTiles in order to make it past the Faces Within the Face.

CrypTile Stories

The island appears to be very strange, which is exemplified by the constant rain in only one spot – a deteriorating settlement inhabited by a Southern belle. She still lives and dresses as a Civil War contemporary. She is credited as "Charlotte No-Haira".

The user is tasked with helping Charlotte, who has been struggling to read stories left by other castaways. The stories are written on the backs of silver CrypTiles and are jumbled and disjointed. The player must rearrange them to create two separate coherent stories, for which he is rewarded with a package of silver Cryptiles from Charlotte.

Poison Garden

In an American Revolutionary War era town, the only remaining resident is a stockade-bound man who has apparently christened himself "The Great CrypTile Thief." Before he was caught, he managed to plant all the gold CrypTiles he stole in a patch of dangerous trees. In order to acquire some gold CrypTiles, the user will have to place map directions in an order that will allow Joni to safely make it through his dangerous garden.

The Faces Within the Face

The player uses silver and gold CrypTiles collected from other parts of the island to complete the Faces within the Face challenge. 5 faces change the display or value of numbered tiles though mathematical operation. Once the tiles are properly altered, they should match the numbers on eight slots below the faces. This recurs three times before the player has completed the challenge.

The Ocean

Shark Crossing

In order to enter Captain Clark's ruined ship, the user must build a bridge over shark-infested waters. This activity is essentially identical to Sulfer River, but with math problems instead of polygons. Once a bridge has been built, Joni and Santiago enter the ship and find their scuba gear, allowing them to pass into the ocean. Strange worm creatures, resembling flexible transparent tubes, greet Joni and Santiago upon their arrival underwater, telling them about CrypTiles, which they feed on, and the Fish Within the Fish.

In the Minisub

Lab5, Captain Clark's trusty minisub, has been damaged, but is still somewhat operational. Though the artificially intelligent sub cannot take them away from the island (much to LapTrap's chagrin) she can retrieve turquoise CrypTiles from the ocean floor. In exchange, the user repairs her damaged electrical circuits.

Tube Cavern

The Cluefinders meet with a giant tube worm, who has a large number of jade CrypTiles stuck in his body. The Cluefinders received the tiles In exchange for repairing his tube segments, which consist of fractions or decimals. The user must add up the fractions and decimals correctly to complete the challenge.

The Fish Within the Fish

The Fish Within the Fish seems to be an underwater replica of the Faces Within the Face with five stone shark-like fish instead of five stone faces. The main difference is that the Fish Within the Fish is a language arts activity with the symbols on each turquoise or jade CrypTile translating into a word. Four of the fish alter the word by changing its tense, adding a prefix or suffix or by replacing the word with a synonym or antonym.

Inside the Island

Once the user unlocks both the Faces Within the Face and the Fish Within the Fish challenges, Joni and Santiago are pulled inside the island, where they find Owen and Leslie. However, Joni and Santiago are immediately imprisoned inside what seems to be a giant laboratory filled with other animals and humans including, they soon discover, Leslie's grandfather. Owen and Leslie escape with LapTrap and quickly realize that the entire island is actually a giant, cunningly disguised extraterrestrial spacecraft that was evidently planted in the ocean to harvest Earthlings as the aliens responsible apparently consider Earthling brains a delicacy.

Spelling Catwalks

In order to allow Owen and Leslie to pass over a giant chasm, the user has to build a series of catwalks by using the letter tiles that correctly spell a word that is said aloud and given in a sentence by one of the aliens' robots. This game is identical to the "Chasm of Words" activity moderated by Thoth in The ClueFinders 4th grade Adventures.

Biosphere Chambers

To free the animals and islanders frozen inside the aliens' "biosphere chambers," the player must create a computer simulation that allows an Earth predator and prey to live together for four "sorlax," which is "approximately two hundred Earth years." There are three biosphere chambers, each with a "Spelling Catwalks" challenge that must be beaten to reach it. The last biosphere chamber contains Joni, Santiago, Leslie's grandfather and the rest of the islanders.

The game's conclusion

Fleeing from the aliens, the ClueFinders and the islanders rush into a room with four giant buttons. In desperation, the ClueFinders each push one. The first, pushed by Joni, activates a launch countdown. The second, pushed by Santiago, causing it to stop raining over Charlotte's house and the third, pushed by Owen, opens up a wall. "Chicken Man" comes by the opening in an ancient galleon, allowing the people to escape the island aboard his ship.

However, the final button, pushed by Leslie, not only allows the gentleworms to enter "inside", but it turns out to be the "tsunami button." Fortunately, the tsunami pushes the ship away from the island just as the volcano erupts and the island sinks into the ocean. However, a moment later, a spaceship with the same structure as the island rises out of the ocean and warps out of sight. Joni comments that no one will believe their story, but Santiago says they have "proof" since she still has two CrypTiles left in her backpack. Unfortunately, it turns out that the bottom of Joni's backpack was burned off, meaning that the CrypTiles are now lost.

Notes

• In each of the two previous games in the series, the ClueFinders appeared dressed differently. In this game, they again appear in their outfits from The ClueFinders 3rd grade Adventures, which go on to become their "regular" clothes for the rest of the series. Much of the animation in this game is also quite obviously recycled from The ClueFinders 3rd grade Adventures, but the animation for the cutscenes are re-illustrated with more details.
• This is the first game in which the red videophone that the ClueFinders use to call each other for help has a different look. The videophone stays like that for the rest of the series. However, in the scene where Joni and Santiago are in the highest level of the volcano where the three inhabitants are trapped, the videophone has its original design from The ClueFinders 3rd grade Adventures. The brand name for the videophone is "Tony", which is likely play on Sony instead of being named after a common male given name.
• Despite having a unique written language and apparently using their own number and measurement systems, all the aliens' computers speak in English. The aliens themselves, however, appear to be physically unable to create anything resembling human speech. The aliens' written language has twenty-six letters which just happen to directly correlate with the letters of the English alphabet.
• Though the ClueFinders are clearly depicted as rescuing the islanders, it's never explained what becomes of the mini-sub or the sea tubes.
• Everyone on the island appears to live like people did at the time their ancestors crashed on the island, meaning that, despite the size of the island, there is little or no communication between the different parties.
• It's never explained how it is that nobody ever reached "Inside," as the sea tubes call it, or "the Chamber," as the islanders call it, before the ClueFinders did.
• The ClueFinders enter the island either from underwater or on land, depending whether the user solves the Faces Within the Face or the Fishes Within the Fish challenge first. However, once inside, Joni and Santiago always appear wearing their normal clothes while, if they entered from underwater, they should still be wearing their scuba gear. They cannot have been wearing their regular outfits under their scuba gear since their clothes show up in one of the compartments of Joni's backpack whenever they are underwater (a corresponding compartment holds their scuba gear whenever they are on land).
• The fact that the island is a volcano and that the ClueFinders later discover that the island is floating would normally constitute an obvious factual error. However, this is later resolved by the fact that the island itself turns out to not be real.
• Santiago's comment about no one believing them apparently disregards the many people they rescued from the island, them being both "someone" as well as evidence.
• At the end of the game two cryptiles floating in the water offer the players the option to "Quit" or "Play again.". These might be the cryptiles Joni lost but it is unlikely as the cryptiles Santiago was probably referring to were the two picked up at the start of the game; they were both rather rusty-looking whereas the two option cryptiles were quite golden. Also the "Play again" cryptile seems to be two cryptiles stuck together.
• In the manual, Sulfur River was referred to as "Sulfur Bridge".
• On the game's box art, Joni, Santiago, and Owen were wearing scuba gear; however in the game, only Joni and Santiago wear Scuba gear for underwater adventures, while Owen and Leslie only wear normal clothes throughout the entire game since they're trapped inside the volcano. Leslie is the only one to never wear scuba gear at all in both the box art and in the game. The scuba gears were depicted black with yellow accents and had rectangular goggles in the box art; but in the game, they are black and have helmets, and Joni's version has red accents while Santiago's version has blue accents.
• The sixteen stone columns (which Joni first sees them as "rocks" before the sulfur sinks down) at Sulfur River are brown in birdseye perspective; but in the cutscenes before Joni hops on them, they are gray.
• Unlike The ClueFinders 3rd grade Adventures, when the player opens Joni's backpack, the backpack will appear at different areas of the screen at default, depending upon the location of the game, as opposed to always being on the upper right-hand corner. Also, when the player continuously clicks on her backpack, the backpack will be shown opening and closing and vice versa.
• This is the first game where LapTrap announces that the map is just a map when the player first enters the map screen for the first time, as opposed to specific locations from the two previous games.
• The sand on the beach is cream-coloured during the cutscenes; but during gameplay, it is gray.
• The boiling sulfur for when Joni and Santiago are at Sulfur River and when it floods the chamber that Owen and Leslie are trapped in is yellow; but while Joni and Santiago are on the beach and according to the map, the sulfur is green (not to be confused with goo from the Goo Lagoon from The ClueFinders 3rd grade Adventures).
• This is the only game where Joni ever puts her hands on a videophone, and it only happens during part of the intro cutscene after the player signs in his or her name.

Skills

Language Arts

Game	Skill
Spelling Catwalks	Spelling
CrypTile Stories	Reading Comprehension
Fish within the Fish	Prefixes and Suffixes

Mathematics

Game	Skill
Shark Crossing	Whole Number Computation
Sulfur River	Geometric Shapes
Faces within the Face	Mathematical Reasoning and Operations
Tube Cavern	Fractions

Science

Game	Skill
Biosphere Chambers	Ecology and Life Systems
In the Minisub	Electrical Circuits

Social Studies

Game	Skill
Poison Garden	Map Reading

External links

• Official website