It's inevitable that almost every popular children's series of books or TV shows these days ends up with a video game tie-in, and Animorphs is definitely in that category with a book circulation in the hundreds of thousands and a TV version already on the air. It was only a matter of time until the video game hit the PC, and now it's here – so how does it fare? That's likely going to depend on if you're already a fan of the Animorphs or not.

The game is a mix of exploration, platform-style levels and RPG-style fighting. It may seem a bit haphazard to the casual player, but all of the elements are taken straight from the books, so anybody familiar with the Animorphs characters and the evil Yeerks they must defeat will feel right at home. Your characters have the ability to morph into the forms of any animal they touch, and some animals will be better at performing certain tasks than others (for example, the full game features a sewer pipe level that's best navigated by – you guessed it – a cockroach). There's a bit inherent variety to the gameplay due to the vast array of animals your characters can morph into.

Graphically the game is pretty standard, but it gets the job done. The textures are pretty low-res, there's some draw-in, and the polygon count is pretty low – but there's nothing that's going to distract younger gamers away from the action. The control is likewise borrowed from other first- or third-person 3D games, with the standard arrow key, ctrl-alt combination, with the shift key used for running. Very easy.

Is Animorphs: Know the Secret for everyone? Probably not. Will fans of the series eat it up? Most definitely. If you've got a bookshelf full of Animorphs titles, give this demo a download – you won't be disappointed.