The DS sparked an industry-wide craze for casual games, as publishers realized that there was a whole new market to tap. Hardcore gamers weren’t the only people with disposable income, and if given the right product, the casual demographic could potentially be more profitable than the hardcore crowd. Game Factory has capitalized on this trend by specializing in licensed titles, and the most recent of their titles I’ve reviewed is Build a Bear Workshop.

This game does pretty much what you’d expect: it translates the Build a Bear store into a virtual experience. The opening setup of the game is a step-by-step process where you build the stuffed animal of your choice. The amount of options in this stage was impressive, and reflected the customizability that the Build a Bear stores are known for.

You start by picking out your animal, and the game gives you some good choices. In addition to the standard Teddy bears there’s a cat, a dog, a monkey and even a frog, as well as a couple others. I chose a little brown spotted dog and named him Winston (after the apparently dead Guitar Hero character, may he rest in peace). Winston was then hooked up to a “fluff” machine, which let me stuff him with huggable filling. I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t keep funneling in the fluff until Winston exploded, but then again this game is rated E for everyone. The game prompted me to poke Winston’s tummy to make sure he was huggable enough, and then he was off to get stitched up.

This little minigame was a tad more realistic than the suturing in Trauma Center. Instead of a simple zigzag motion, I had to thread a needle through Winston’s hide and close up his back. The final step was putting in his heart—this was accomplished by rubbing four small colored hearts that appeared on the screen, and then “whispering a secret wish” into one of them. I wasn’t quite sure how to do that, so I just shouted into the mic, which seemed to work. In any case, it’s cool that they used the mic and it should seem magical for little children.

Apparently the Build a Bear world has public indecency laws, because Winston couldn’t leave the factory in the buff. I decked him out in a T-shirt and jeans, and then headed for his house, or “cub condo” in Build a Bear speak. Incidentally, the writing in this game is almost painfully adorable. Words like “pawesome,” “furbulous,” and “beary” show up everywhere. In fact, the writers tried to work paw, fur and bear into the writing wherever they could. The game’s motto was “don’t worry, be furry,” and since I hadn’t shaved when I was playing it, I felt right at home.

Unfortunately, after the decently interactive building phase, the game takes a turn for the shallow, dialogue notwithstanding.

Winston’s pad had several activities displayed on the touch screen, and I played around with each of them. The first was a cooking game where I had to place several ingredients in a pot, stir well with the stylus, and then bake the concoction in an oven. I tried my hand at chocolate cake (in this game, it isn’t a lie) and decorated it with some icing. It looked pretty tasty, but Winston took only a couple bites and decided he wasn’t very hungry. Most of the other dishes I prepared were desserts, so I must assume that the citizens of Build a Bear world subsist mainly on confectionaries, much like their friends over in Strawberry Shortcake land (incidentally, another Game Factory property). The cooking game had a very cool interface, with a sliding oven door, little bowls of ingredients, and even tiny forks, spoons and napkins so that Winston could eat with civility. Other than that, there wasn’t much to do in the cooking game besi...