I played Mind Castle: Spell of the Word Wizard when I was but a wee brain of less than ten. The gist of it is that you stumble into a wizard's tower, he gets pissed off because he hates trespassers and turns you into a frog, and you have to earn your way out of the tower and back to humanity by proving your vocabulary's mettle.
The gameplay itself is simple enough, and if I remember right, pretty well unproblematic; you start at the top of the tower and try to work your way down and escape.
You click to move, and that's about all there is to it. No glitches were evident. If you don't get out in the allotted time frame, or if you get too many answers wrong, you have to spend the rest of your life there as his froggy servant. When you get an answer wrong it plays this really dour music and the wizard explains how desperately mistaken you are.
The kinds of words it teaches the player would be new to many adults, but aren't outside the grasp of children in the target age group. The questions are such that the wizard gives you a definition and a few words, and you're supposed to pick the one that fits best; the words often sound or look similar,
but are actually quite different. Very educational, but very frustrating when you keep getting it wrong and the wizard keeps laughing at you. He seems to really want a frog around to do his bidding; I think the last one retired or something. Anyway, there's a real danger here of ending up as a frog in a jester hat for the rest of your life, just because some old scrabble nerd has a sick amphibian fetish.
This game was in my regular rotation as a kid, along with Amazon Trail and The Secret Island of Dr. Quandry - I recommend it, especially if the SATs are coming up or you have dangerously low blood pressure. Educational games are a terrific way to learn and stay sharp when you're a child, and if the information therein is relevant to your studies, they're just as terrific for adults to learn on. I myself am obtaining a copy of The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain in order to better memorize the periodic table - it's a highly underrated method of learning, once you're past 12 or so, and one that could use all the promotion one could throw at it.
