The plot in
The Proud Family centers on Penny Proud as she attempts to earn enough cash to buy her parents a T.H.A.N.G. (Total Home Automation Necessity Gizmo) for their anniversary. As you bring Penny around her neighborhood in search of various avenues of income, you will invariably meet her friends, members of her family, and other inhabitants of the area.
All dialogue (which is actually rather comical, at least to this 23 year old) is handled through on screen boxes. The first problem I ran into was the lack of direction you get from this dialogue. Though it does serve to further expose the plot, it does little in the way of helping you complete your tasks at hand. You have little to no direction after you discover what your next challenge is, and this becomes even worse if you save the game and come back later to play it with an even worse memory of where you left off.
Once you get going in the game, you will come to realize that the single greatest way to make money is to pick up trash off the street and dump it into a recycling bin. Maybe I am underestimating the teaching method that this game is trying to employ. Perhaps that by showing kids how mind-numbingly boring it is to constantly pick up trash, they are trying to teach them not to litter, or that public service isn’t one of the more pleasant experiences in life. Either way, this part of the game runs out of steam fast, and by the time you pick up your n’th Coke can or crumpled piece of paper, you’re ready to pull your hair out.
There are, however, other ways to make money, though they suffer from the same lack of direction that the overall game does. As you progress through the game, you expose mini-games that can be played for money or for leisure. While they are not that great in and of themselves, they do serve as a reprieve to the monotony of picking up litter, though I doubt anyone will be playing them in their spare time after they’ve had their fill of the game.
