Kids may be a huge handful to take care of, but in this sequel to Carrie the Caregiver, handling children isn’t all too different from how you deal with customers in games like Diner Dash. It’s the same basic formula except that instead of adult customers, you’re serving the preschool toddlers at activity stations – painting, matching shapes, lunchtime, writing, and baking – and tending to their needs in time to send them off so that more kids can be served in the same way.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to guide Carrie through each hectic day of taking care of a room full of kids, moving each one to an empty station, then providing them with all the items they need – paintbrushes and paint in the case of the painting exercise, food in the case of lunchtime, and so on. At first you’ll just learn the ropes at one activity at a time, for 10 levels in a row, but later in the game, you’ll actually progress from one activity to the next just like in the daily schedule of a preschool.

Each preschool activity will require Carrie to move from station to station, gathering items and delivering them to kids, which takes time. Carrie can hold one item in each hand, so you can have her fetching two things at a time, but you get extra points for chaining two of the same action together quickly, so it’s better for her to deliver two of the same kind of item. You also get extra points for matching color-coded kids to stations with the same colors, as well as bonuses for speedy work. As the day goes on, more kids will show up in a line at the bottom of the screen and you’ll want to finish serving each kid and clean up each station fast enough to make way for the newcomers. Just your typical day at a time-management service game, except with cute little tykes to keep happy.

The gradually decreasing number of hearts beside each boy or girl tells you how much time you have left to tend to them. When the hearts run out, the children leave, and we can’t have that, can we? Fortunately, there are a few ways for Carrie to keep the kids happy. As the levels progress, you’ll get access to useful items like a chair, a book, a teddy bear and a guitar. Most of these items can be used to keep kids from getting bored even while Carrie is busy elsewhere, with a simple click-and-drag of the mouse. There are always more things to do as the game goes on. Kids will drop things and cry until you get them replacements, while others might get a cold and will need tissues to wipe their noses, and others still might doze off and need to be awakened and so forth.

The children are also differentiated by hair color, with some being patient and slow and others having short attention spans, and yet others prone to being troublesome handfuls. It’s a simplistic way of telling the kids apart, but it works when you only have a few seconds to decide in which order to take care of the kids.

The graphics are cute and cartoonish, like something out of a simple kid’s storybook, and the colors are pleasingly pastel-shaded. Nothing really fancy, but the graphics do the job. The sound design, on the other hand, is a real delight. The children are voiced really convincingly and you’ll be thrilled when a kid adorably says “Thank you Carrie” after you help them, while the sound of a bawling child is a clear sign that you need to give them your attention right away!

All in all, Carrie The Caregiver 2 manages to be a sweet and charming game that lets you play at taking care of preschoolers with only a fraction of the sweat and fuss and exhaustion of the real thing. And somehow, it just feels more rewarding to take care of kids than serving grown-up customers, in this game. With five different types of activities, additional mini-games to unlock, and dozens of little kids waiting for your attention, you’ll have your hands full, but hopefully in a fun way.

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