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

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

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

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