This is a cute kids game at first glance but there’s a lot more to it. There’s a lot for them to do like exploring Wizard City, duelling with wizards and other creatures in the Wizard 101 realm, solving puzzles, participating in some mini-games and even collecting pets as you continue your wizardly quest. So as you can see there’s no shortage of activities for anyone playing this game.

What’s really nice about this game is that you can pick it up and put it down after 30 minutes – you can just run short quests if you want to. There’s no need to get buried in quests that take several hours unless you really want to.

Great Parental Controls

For all the parents out there this is an ideal game for your kids because of the parental controls built into the game. You can set up a kids account and a parental account and then set controls up from there including the most important ones like “no private messages” to keep your kids safe online. Even simple things like the bad language filter which just plain stops bad language from being used are a really nice touch from a parent’s point of view.

Another bit of good news is that you can’t trade items or money in the game so there’s no risk of the game turning into a money generating business for players – unlike some other famous examples. There’s also an online store where you can spend your Crowns (purchased with real money) and some of these are well worth looking into.

Your character has a mana level that can be depleted in various ways but combat, in the form of Wizard and creature duels, being the most obvious ones. And of course there’s the standard MMO character customization screen where you can tweak your characters appearance to your hearts desire.  The maximum character level is 50 but this will take a considerable amount of time to achieve – you’ll normally only reach around level 20 after several weeks of play.

Wizard 101 is free to start playing, in the Free to Play Zones, but you will have to pay a fee afterwards but right now there’s a limited special that lets you play the game for $59.95 for an entire year and you can also buy family members or friends a prepaid gift card for time in the game or to purchase more Crowns.

There are minimum system requirements for the game and these need to be taken into account before you start. You’ll need:

Windows 98SE or later

1GHz Processor

512MB Ram

GEForce 2 or higher

5GB of hard disk space

* The game won’t run on a Mac by default

A great game for kids and adults alike but the parental controls in Wizard 101 sets is apart from the competition for the kids’ audience because it makes the game much safer for them to play.