Dinosaur Junction Review
Dinosaur Junction is a virtual world that puts your kid in the shoes of an alien palaeontologist and go on a hunt for dinosaur fossils. It seeks to combine every child’s every child’s favorite dinosaur and the exoticness of space aliens into a friendly package that will appeal to kids of all ages.
Users who sign up for Dinosaur Junction can create their own alien homes, get a dino pet, make new friends, and learn about dinosaurs and a host of science related topics.
Dinosaur Junction is free to play. However, one can also avail of the premier membership that gives you access to additional features. Premier membership costs $5.95/month, and Dinosaur Junction offers a free 30-day trial.
In this article, we will explore how Dinosaur Junction stacks up to the various other virtual worlds for children on the internet.
Dinosaur Junction has an interesting theme. By combining the ever-popular concept of dinosaurs and space aliens, Dinosaur Junction is able to appeal to a very wide audience. Most children love to role-play as a palaeontologist, and this game offers them a chance to do so through a cute alien protagonist.
At the heart of Dinosaur Junction is a family friendly virtual world where kids can meet up and interact with other children from across the globe. Security, thus, becomes of essence. Since most of the interaction in Dinosaur Junction involves chatting or messaging, a strict safe chat mode is employed to keep your child safe. In the ‘Basic Safe Chat’ mode, your child can only reply to messages with a set of pre-written replies. These replies include greetings, common phrases, etc. In the ‘Premier Safe Chat’ mode, your child can type in his own responses. While this practice may seem designed to force users to upgrade to premium membership, it does a very good job of screening out any harmful elements from the virtual world.
Dinosaur Junction puts a lot of emphasis on mini games that are designed to educate and inform your child about a variety of subjects. Since the protagonist is a space alien cum palaeontologist, the focus, understandably, is on dinosaurs and outer space. These mini-games have a social element to them too, and one can play them either alone, or with friends in the virtual world.
No virtual world would be complete without its own economy. Dinosaur Junction has a virtual currency called ‘gems’. These gems can be used to buy better furniture and decor for the alien houses, upgrade the dino pets, buy better clothing items for the alien protagonist, etc. Gems can be earned by completing mini-games and quests within the virtual world.
Where Dinosaur Junction falters is in the cookie-cutter features and ho-hum graphics that it offers. When compared to an offering like Disney’s Pixie Hollow, the graphics and animation seem almost pedestrian. While this may not seem like a big issue to adults, kids tend to put a lot of emphasis on quality graphics and images. This could be a potential turn off for many children.
The features in Dinosaur Junction leave a lot to be desired. There is little to no innovation. The entire idea of virtual currency + virtual world has been done to death by a number of other virtual worlds, many of which are completely free to play.
It appears that Dinosaur Junction just took two popular themes, combined them together, threw in some generic features and added an aggressive premium membership policy to cash in on the virtual world boom. While the idea of dinosaurs and space aliens is very appealing, the lack of features and the aggressive selling of the premium membership makes Dinosaur Junction a less than desirable virtual world for your kids.
Visit Dinosaur Junction at www.dinosaurjunction.com.
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