Trollz: Hair Affair

The Trollz are five female Trolls, and are apparently a new cartoon on the DIC network, showing on Fox stations. I haven’t seen the cartoon yet, so don’t know much about it. But the Trollz characters look cute, anyway. The game’s premise is pretty simple; the boy trolls have been falsely accused of cheating.  If they’re not exonerated, they’ll be sent to military school, where (horrors!), they’ll have their hair cut. It’s up to the girls to save the day!

The story is told in increments, by way of playing through five different mini-games. Each of these games is connected to a particular Troll. The games are: Watch the Hair, a game where the miniaturized troll travels back and forth across strands of hair detangling, without getting zapped by the “frizzies”; Smarty Trollz, a concentration matching game; Trollz Dance, a Dance Dance Revolution game; Flying Spell, a simple arcade game in the sky; and Spell Beadz, a Bust-A-Move type game. The games are played over and over again throughout the story mode, increasing in difficulty as the game advances.

The games are simple, but cutely drawn and designed fairly well. The tone and setting has a little too much “girlspeak,” with a constant stream of girl slang, but young girls won’t mind. Of the games, Spell Beadz and Trollz Dance are the most fun of the five, with Watch the Hair probably the least fun of the bunch. The games are executed nicely for the most part, but the game Flying Spell is a little problematic, in that the hazards are all off-screen, and can’t be seen until the troll is right on top of them.  Still, this game is so easy, that’s not much of a problem.

Powerups can be earned during gameplay for additional fun during the games. Also, new outfits can be earned and applied to the trollz. The mini-games can be played separately from the story mode. There are three difficulty levels for each game.

All in all, this is a decent game for young girls. The only problem is that there’s just not much to it. There are only five mini-games, and even with the different levels that get opened up during gameplay, and the difficulty levels available, there’s just not enough variety involved. After a couple of weeks, the game probably won’t get picked up much. Whether to pick this up for Christmas or not will depend on how many little girls are in the family, and if they are fans of the TV show. If you’re looking for a girl-themed collection of mini-games with more content, you may want to check out Barbie Groovy Games (easy) or Lizzie McGuire: Lizzie Diaries (a little more difficult).

Gameplay: 7.0
This is a fun enough game for young girls, but the content is really lacking when it comes to variety and features. There just isn’t enough to do, and girls will get bored quickly.

Graphics: 7.0
The game is animated and drawn decently for the GBA.

Sound: 7.0
The music is Ok, but forgettable.

Difficulty: Easy
This game is very easy.

Concept: 6.0
There is nothing new here, but the execution is good.

Overall: 7.0
A cute girl game, but one that really needs more to get rated higher.