First, let's talk about Christmas Crisis. Made by Koingo Software, this game puts you in charge of gift deployment in the service of Santa Claus himself. Essentially a vertical scroller, you command The Sleigh on its mission to drop presents into the houses of the (presumably) deserving.

As you fly over the snowy landscape, you control The Sleigh with the WASD keys. There is no crafty physics engine in place here; it's straight-up simple movement. Houses will pass by you, strewn over randomly across the ground. Your mission is to drop gifts into a percentage of houses, and this percentage grows with each succeeding level. If you fail to make the percentage, you start over from the beginning.

To drop gifts, you'll either hit the space bar as the little red "x" crosses over a house, or click the left mouse button directly upon a house once it falls within the green circle that surrounds The Sleigh at all times. This sounds a lot easier than it really is, partly because the mechanics of Christmas Crisis are so old school that you will over-play, so to speak. You might expect drift where there isn't any, for example. In fact, The Sleigh remains completely stationary with regard to the landscape passing beneath it; you must constantly be on the move, or you'll run right off the bottom of the screen and lose one of your four lives.

Additionally, random aircraft come flying down the screen toward you. They don't move quickly, and only travel in a straight line, but a collision with one takes away one of your lives. You'll face jumbo jets, stealth bombers, and red biplanes, but they all move at the same pace.

Accuracy is important in this game, as with each missed house, your score is deducted. Negative numbers are possible, so make sure each drop counts. Again, it's surprisingly challenging to accomplish this simple-sounding feat -- your choice of deployment method is going to be key. Either you'll find that you're a better shot with the red "x", which means getting good at maneuvering The Sleigh, or you'll do a lot of pinpoint mouse clicking, which you'll discover some difficulty staying within the "strike zone" of the green circle.

This game will help your child improve hand-eye coordination and better her mouse skills as well. In fact, it might help her manage frustration issues as well, which is always a bonus.