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14 of 15 found the following review helpful:
 awsome!Dec 03, 2002
This game is so cool!
It has tons of fun games, and there are 3 miniture levels,
including spelling, math,fractions, putting together words, geography
and others! I had so much fun playing this!!!
Throughout the whole game, a yellow laptop fallows you and the other cluefinders around. When you click on it, it acsesses many things, like how to change the level of difficulty on a game, and it has info about the fellow clue finders. I love this game, I play everyday!
10 of 11 found the following review helpful:
 Meaningless Plot and few gamesAug 29, 2005
Unlike the other software in the Cluefinders series, The Secret of the Living Volcano does not have an interesting plot.
WARNING: SPOILERS VIEW. The cluefinders are washed ashore on an active volcano. There's no villian with a plan, so the game is less interesting. The ending will surely dissapoint you. There are 4 buttons that the cluefinders press and then, they escape the volcano erupting and Joni loses the Cryptiles and nobody will beleive them. End of story. SPOILERS VIEW ENDS HERE.
Don't get me wrong, there are some good games in here, but there are only... 10. Cluefinders 3rd Grade had 24 games and 4th Grade had 15 games. WHAT IS GOING ON!!! As you go on, 6th Grade and Math will only have 9 games!!! Why is the Learning Company adding lesser, and lesser games!?
Also half the games involve logic in this CDROM. The Fish within the fish and the faces within the face are also not very good. They're confusing and weird.
I don't really recommend this for 4th or 5th graders. Get 3rd Grade for in-depth education. Get 4th Grade for an intresting plot. Get 6th Grade for higher thinking problems. Don't get 5th Grade for confusing games and a meaningless plot.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 permanently stalls halfway through gameJul 23, 2006
By capybara
We had a CD of this game that permently stalled before we were halfway through it. We tried it in both of our CD Rom players to no avail and adjusted every thing we could imagine on our computer that might help. There is NO help form The Learning Company for this product and even the online FAQs for this product are slim and nothing to help. We liked the game enough to buy another one in case it was the CD, to no avail. It permanently stops in the exact same spot in the game. It's worse to enjoy a game only to be stopped in the middle than to have never tried it at all. We are operating an IBM Windows XP machine and set all the settings to what the installation info said is required.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
not the very best cluefinder gameFeb 13, 2006
this game is extremely long and gets boring. the fish within fish and the face within face get boring so quickly. a dull game
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
ClueFinders 5th Grade: Very Fun & Educational!Dec 21, 2007
Hello, I'm StoryMaker. I just finished ClueFinders 5th Grade: The Secret of the Living Volcano. It's a great addition to the ClueFinders educational software series! Not only are the games very fun, but it is perfect for the 4th-5th Grade level, covering math, geography, science, language arts, etc. It's not to easy, not too hard.
In this game, the ClueFinders - Joni, Owen, Leslie, & Santiago - are peacefully on a ship one fine day. Leslie's grandpa is the captain. LapTrap, their cowardly yellow laptop friend, is just uncovering more of some strange artifacts that are later revealed to be called CrypTiles. Then, a tsunami arises, sending Joni & Santiago to an island with an active volcano, Leslie & Owen to a strange CrypTile labyrinth, and the captain to...where? Get to the bottom of this mystery with the ClueFinders, and learn some stuff, too!
As I was playing this game, I let my younger sister, Chocolate Dog, take turns playing the mini-games with me. You have to play each mini-game 12 times to get 12 CrypTiles, and then you have to use your CrypTiles to play some special, much longer games, "The Fish within the Fish" and "The Faces within the Face". This sounds tiresome, but the mini-games are awfully darn quick & easy, so playing them 12 times isn't too bad. This game is divided up into 3 sections - the land area, the sea area, and the last area. Once you are done with both land & sea with Joni & Santiago, you go to the last area with Leslie & Owen. Each section (besides the last one) has 2 mini-games (I think) that can be accessed by exploring the area. As I said, each must be played 12 times and the CrypTiles gained must be used to access "The Fish/Faces within the Fish/Face". (Fish is to sea, face is to land.) It might sound like major lack of variety, but don't worry - they're fun and don't bore easily. There's also a game you must play when getting into the land/sea areas. The last area is a bit different, as you do not collect CrypTiles. I'm not really going to tell you 'bout it, though, since I don't want to spoil the plot.
It sounds lame, but this game made me feel friendlier with my two sisters, Russian Blue Witch (older) and Chocolate Dog (younger). I mean, just solving those problems together made us feel like pals (or at least I felt like pals with them).
Here's some ratings on this CD-ROM's aspects. If you're low on time, don't read it. It's awfully long.
-Graphics: 7/10. The graphics are indeed good. There's a little bit of a problem, though: inconsistency. Sometimes, solid-colored cartoons touch detailed-looking CrypTiles. Also, some of the images are recycled from ClueFinders 3rd Grade, others aren't. However, other than that, they're good. They've even got some CGI.
-Gameplay: 8/10. Very fun in my opinion. Sometimes, it tires a little, and a bit more variety would be better, but the games are all very fun. Mostly, it's just clicking/dragging, but it's still a blast. The fractions-tube game would be better if it had a scrap pile to put fractions not in use, but most of the games are great the way they are.
-Educational Value: 8/10. It teaches and practices all sorts of subjects. It is very well fit for 4th-5th Grade level. It covers: addition, subtraction, multiplication, geometry, science, geography, a bit of history, reading comphrehension/making paragraphs, alphabetizing, spelling and...am I forgetting anything?
-Plot: 6 and a half/10. It's not my favorite, but it's good enough. One lame part at the end (not much of a spoiler): Joni lost her spare CrypTiles and supposedly can't prove the events that happened in the game. HEL-LO??? What about WITNESSES? You've got LOTS of WITNESSES! LOL Oh, and, I have to say, the "Play Again/Quit" screen at the end is slightly creepy to me - not a very good ending note.
-Humor: 7/10. There's enough funniness at just the right times to liven up the semi-serious plot. They're not joking all the time - just at the right times. "Salami?" "No! Tsunami!" LOL
Music: 5/10. I really didn't like it. There was a lot of creepy-ish music. The music from the 3rd Grade game is much better.
Appropriate-ness (Violence, etc.): I'd say about 10/10. It's a little creepy sometimes, but SERIOUSLY.
Overall, I'd say this is a good ClueFinders game for 4th & 5th Graders. Very fun and quite educational! The 4th Grade ClueFinders is great, too! I haven't played much of ClueFinders 3rd Grade because when I was in 3rd Grade, I was a little afraid to get past Goo Falls because I thought I might fail, but what I have played is good. I have watched my older sister Russian Blue Witch play all of the different ClueFinders games. There's 3rd Grade (Mystery of Mathra), 4th Grade (Puzzle of Pyramid), 5th Grade (this one), 6th Grade (um...Plant Thingy XD), Math (um...Snow Thingy XD), Reading (Mystery of Amulet), & Search and Solve (er, the amusement park thing-a-ma-bob), as well as the bonus discs Mystery Mansion Arcade & Real World Adventure Kit. (I think the Mystery of Amulet bonus discs is really Reading. I could be wrong.) Of course, I've only played 3rd, 4th, & 5th Grade so far, as well as the bonus discs. I reccomend ClueFinders 5th Grade to 4th & 5th Graders. Signed, StoryMaker. "Gotta trust the kid's review!"
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