LEGO Creator Harry Potter is atypical of children's programs that usually run players through a fixed set of activities or educational challenges. Instead, the designers have made a serious effort to leave things wide open and flexible, sticking close to the reason why kids enjoy LEGO in the first place. Players can place LEGO units--animals, characters, blocks, doors, chests--around the landscape of Hogwarts. But this is no mere simulation of a real-life play experience--this LEGO world is animated! With a single mouse click, players bring their creations to life. Place a LEGO snake on-screen in this game and it will promptly slither for cover. Likewise, the Harry Potter characters--who are incredibly charming when rendered as standard LEGO people--will move around the environment created for them, even interacting when they come together.

While the complexity of this package makes it tougher to master than many games, a series of tutorials disguised as challenges can smooth out the learning curve. Users explore the school, build LEGO trains, find lost animals and as they do, they learn the lay of the land. The challenges have another motivator built in--without them, you cannot cast all the magical spells otherwise available to Harry and the others.

LEGO Creator Harry Potter frees you to build a stage and place upon it the well-known characters from the JK Rowling novels. What happens next is limited only by your imagination. --Alyx Dellamonica