Take the classic Animal Crossing game, give it a little Zelda-like exploration, toss in a few dozen Pokémon-like critters, sprinkle some faerie dust on it, and you have Neopets: Quizara's Curse.

Launching from the Neopets online universe, take one of three different Neopets species (more unlockable later) through a series of online worlds to unlock Faerie Land, freeing fairies as you go. Play language arts games along the way to unlock new items for your pets, unlock more pets, and more.

You begin your adventure at Faerie Haven, for which you'll unlock furniture as you explore. Petpets along the way challenge you to games like, "Find the predicate," and, "Is this sentence grammatically correct?" While the minigames aren't particularly groundbreaking, they're fairly quick and get players back into the exploration before boredom sets in. A few times, it didn't actually speak the directions (a minor bug cured by the hint key), and sometimes, a question can have more than one right answer but only accept the "best" answer, but overall, it's a challenge even to adults to polish some of those language skills that have been languishing.

The game has no real combat and rarely requires fast reflexes, making it "relaxing" as my 8-year-old calls it. It has plenty of unlockables and hidden treasures to keep the interest level up, although having to play every level five times to free different kinds of fairies can get old, and the various denizens of this world only have a couple dozen phrases that get old quickly.

As players unlock more items and attain more goals, like other Didj games, they earn bits that can be spent on micromods, such as customized menu screens and unlockable areas in the game. Players can also find Virtual Prize Codes, which players can take to Neopets.com (Free registration) and earn "neopoints" and items for their online personae. Note, though, a typo in the Didj game: it says to enter the code at neopets.com/Quizara, but this will give you a 404 (not found) error. The "Q" needs to be lowercase for the URL to work.

The game includes one other minor bug, for which we found a quick fix: sometimes, the pet will start moving in a particular direction, even without a hand on the D-pad. Pressing another direction will change course until the D-pad is released, at which point the pet will start heading the old direction again. If this happens, just tap the D-pad in the direction the pet insists on moving, and it will stop on release.

The graphics look nice with a variety of environments, although the music is some of the most repetitive game music I've ever heard. It's not too bad when playing, but you might want to make sure your kids have headphones for the Didj.

My daughter enjoys this game, and for her, the unlockables give her that little sense of accomplishment that motivates her to keep playing. We can see from the Learning Path that she's doing well with it, but we know she likes it just from hearing, "Mom! I just freed another faerie! I just unlocked a new pet! His name is...!" Anytime a kid can get that excited about a language arts game, it gets a recommendation from me. A few bugs aside, this one's worth adding to the library if your child doesn't need too much action.