After all that gamer talk yesterday, today is my reprieve from anything so serious.

Oh yes, that means kid’s apps!

ABC Maze is a recent development by the creators of iWriteWords, a favorite app of ours we gave high accolades several months ago in June. Thankfully, gdiplus knows a thing or two about developing stellar apps. They found a formula that works and they’re sticking to it. Much like iWriteWords, the opening screen of ABC Maze has a kooky giraffe drawing with buttons in the upper right that sway realistically to the ever tilt and turn of your iPhone. Rather curiously, a vroom vroom noise from a speeding car is heard as the app opens, and the glowing, stoplight red background scheme oozes with anticipation, raciness, maybe even a bit of ADHD.

But, don’t crack out the Ritalin just yet, ABC Maze requires time and patience, and is not meant to be a fast-paced game at all. If anything, the game encourages children to fiddle around with the letters, touching them and hearing their pronunciations, tossing them around with the ever-cool, whisper of a cloud physics setting gdiplus flaunts. And, rightly so. With every tilt of the phone, the letters swivel this way and that, rocking gently back and forth as if on well-oiled tracks, their movement latently responding a second or two after you tilt. The movement takes some adjusting to, even for an adult, so it’s a great premise to learn hand and eye coordination. The playing screen is much like iWriteWords, with colorful, large letters encased in bubbles, and a mission to spell easy and familar words – in this case, animals. I was surprised, actually, to see “crane” as one of the animal words. The usuals are there – dog, cat, bunny – but crane, crab, and camel really jumped out at me. I hope to one day see macaw, yak, ocelot.

Changing from the bubbly, colorfully bright palette of iWriteWords, for ABC Maze gdiplus opted for a more subdued, metallic look, with industrial textures, robotic door sounds, and a mysterious glow emanating from an unknown source. To add some kid-appropriate lightheartedness to the app, the main character you child must manipulate, move around, is a wee chick aptly named “Birdie.” So fluffy he appears to be a tiny ball of feather, his beak and wings are the only indicators that a chick is buried somewhere in the white, and his chirruping “cheep” gives away his bird heritage. He, or she, is absolutely adorable whenever you make him jump (tap him) and when a word is completed – Birdie’s eyes smile, upturned, his wings flapping out as much as he can summon, and his beak open with crisp chirps of joy.

Unlike in iWriteWords, where your child must collect the letters for an unknown word, here the word is known, spelled out at the top, and your child must navigate a simple maze to collect all the letters. The letters initially are stagnant in their positions, and remain so unless your child prods them with a finger, encasing them in bubbles and then popping them – if he so desires -, letting the letters drop down in a jumbled mess. From then on the letters move around just like Birdie with every tilt and turn of the iPhone. However, your child can opt not to fiddle around with the letters and just easily collect them in one fell swoop. It’s his choice. Either way, once a word is completed, a child’s voice clearly rings out, enunciating each letter and then the animal word, itself. A precious sketch of the animal appears below, with shooting stars bursting forth in colors of green, blue and pink, and the collective cheers of many recorded children are heard. Learning words is no small feat, and I’d say it calls for a round of celebration.

An excellent app for stimulating the imagination, developing fine motor skills, and developing an association between letters, words and meanings, ABC Maze is an excellent learning tool for young children. With all the complicated apps out there for children, sometimes it’s simple ones, like the ones by gdiplus, that effectively maintain a symmetry between simplicity and a professional aesthetic. And, it’s entertaining for children and adults, alike.

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