*Lets out primal scream*

GGRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWRRRRRR!!!

Okay, maybe that’s more of a animal roar, equivalent to me morphing into some hairy creature, with large, glistening fangs, and tearing off my shirt to make way for my expanding, beastly chest. Why the screaming? The panting and pounding of the chest, the wrath? Fly-Flap, a new game by AstalaVista. Trust me when I say those flies can be so pesky.

Of course, frustration isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Frustration can indicate either a ridiculously impossible scenario, or something that proves challenging enough to force you into repeated plays. Fly-Flap falls into the latter category: the game is solidly difficult. It challenges your reaction rate and finger speed by challenging you to kill flies and avoid beetles, at increasingly manic speeds. In some levels spiders appear, to your much-needed aid, and provide you with a means to double your points by slurping down any fly you drag to their mouths. They gobble them down and zip away off screen, but be careful not to tap on the spiders by accident, or you’ll send them falling to the ground, a slight scream escaping from their spider mouths. Their screams, along with the other sounds in this game, are apparently manufactured by the developers, themselves – and by manufactured I mean straight from their mouths. Oh yes, those screams and buzzes, and, yes, even the irksome,

Spiders will eat flies for you and double your points.

snickering, slightly evil and beckoning “mehehehhehehehehe” sound the flies make are all brilliantly contorted from the developer’s vocal chords. I must give them a lot of credit for this because the sounds are all top-notch, if slightly eccentric.

Fly-Flap offers two game modes, Arcade and Campaign, the first of which entertains you silly with more and more flies, at faster and more blinding speeds, and the second of which offers a more structured gameplay, with levels and specific objectives. I preferred Campaign mode right off the bat, on principle alone – levels with explicit directions give me focus, a well-established goal to work toward. And, trust me, the objectives are not easy. Starting off on the second level, you must feed 10 flies to a hungry spider in one minute, while killing other hordes of flies that appear onscreen. In any other game, this would be an easy feat, but in Fly-Flap you have something called a lifemeter that loses life whenever you miss squishing a fly and tap the air, instead. That’s right, you’re actually punished for missing, and the game will end if your lifemeter runs out. Secondly, to actually earn the points you deserve for squishing the flies, you must also tap the point bubbles they release two seconds after the fact. Given the mad speed at which you’ll be squishing flies in this game, it’s not always an easy task to pop all the bubbles – you’re almost guaranteed to lose out on 500 points per round.

Whatever you do, DON'T TOUCH THE BEATLES. Period.

As you progress through the levels, you’re given various aids and bonuses to help you in your quest to rid nature of flies – poison, anti-bug spray (kills a multitude of flies at once), horns (frightens enemies), blinding (makes flies stop), slowdowns (no explanation needed), and more. Beetles are also introduced, and these are bugs you want absolutely nothing to do with. They’re only good for making you lose the game, erupting in a flurry of purple and pink gas that encases surrounding flies, and basically calls the Game Over title to appear. Definitely avoid tapping on these suckers.

Overall, the graphics are good, the sounds amusing, and the gameplay challenging and quirky enough to keep things interesting. I was actually pleasantly surprised at how entertaining the game was, and I will probably return for a few more rounds. I wish the game wasn’t quite so hard – sometimes it’s exceedingly difficult to aim for the flies, and sometimes it feels as if my finger taps aren’t registering – but in a way I relish the near impossibility. Far too many games are quick to play and over in a flash, so why not embrace Fly-Flap’s challenge and enjoy a little bug squishing?

iTouchiLearn Words consists of three parts: two word games and a series of animations based on the same pool of words to reinforce learning. Simply touch, play, learn and enjoy. Unlike static flash cards, iTouchiLearn Words provides a fun, interactive way to learn, while keeping the sessions short to keep the child’s mind engaged and attentive. The app is simply, but effectively designed – some of the illustrations and animations aren’t the greatest, but I’m sure most young children won’t mind, so long as the adult can get past whatever preconceived biases they may have against less fastidious-looking artwork.

The main menu shows three tabs in the form of torn out sheets of notepad paper, one with ABC, one with a magnifying glass, and one with a film slide showing a baby crawling. The first tab, ABC, is a word game where a picture is shown, along with four possible word choices. The narrator, for example, says, “Touch the dog,” and your child has to figure out which word represents dog. When a wrong word is selected – let’s

Positive reinforcement in action

say cat – the narrator reads the word aloud, but then a buzzer noise is heard, and the narrator repeats the command, “Touch the dog.” This process of elimination continues until your child selects the right word, dog, and applause is heard, a WOOHOO! and a ringing bell. The game is all about positive reinforcement, indicated all the more by the smiling, happy star that appears when a right answer is selected. Over time, the idea is that your child will begin to associate the visual imagery with the word, itself.

The next game, indicated by the magnifying glass, is nearly the opposite of the aforementioned game: this time around, a word is given – i.e. balloon – and three possible images are shown. The process is the same as the last game – your child gradually eliminates choices until the correct one is chosen, with negative and positive reinforcement along the way. The last game, though, is where iTouchiLearn Words truly shines. The last game takes the cognitive skills up a notch by introducing animation in tandem with words, so your child may recognize different words that may be used with the same image, depending on the situation at hand. I really like the egg animation, in particular. First, an egg is shown, with the word “egg” spoken aloud. Next, the egg breaks open and lands in a skillet, where the phrase “fried egg” is heard, along with a sizzling sound. A chicken is then shown, it lays an egg, then egg hatches open and reveals a chick, with the narrator using words the entire time. The chick then goes through a quick growth metamorphisis back into a chicken. It’s actually quite brilliant, and I’m sure, fascinating for a child to behold.

A few of the animations may be a bit difficult to conceive – the animation where the boy is playing catch with a small, rubber ball comes to mind – but given the expansive, cognitive abilities of a growing child, I’m sure everything contained within this app is completely fathomable, and able to be deciphered, tucked away into knowledge. Sure, the illustrations aren’t the greatest, but the app performs well, the narrator is loud and clear, and the app definitely has more potential than other, more static flashcard type apps in the App Store.

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I once had a Spirograph as a kid. It’s a strange-looking contraption, of the plastic and rotor kind that with its bright colors is meant to attract children, but really, is just a toy conceived and appreciated by adults. Any inherent mathematical properties to the Spirograph is appreciated only by the most astute adult, and even then that’s a rare appreciation – most people enjoy the Spirograph for its seeming whimsical wizardy, the ability to churn out impeccably arranged lines in one spiral after another, an overlapping pattern continuum ad infinitum. I enjoyed using the Spirograph, seeing the same patterns emerge, unidentifiable from each other in their perfection save for a different use of color, and I remember keeping an ever-growing pile of my spiro drawings. But relying on a mechanism to produce drawings proved limiting for me – as I’m sure it did for many kids – and my interest quickly waned in favor of coloring books, whose blank pages and free reign of crayons seemed liberating by comparison. Just like the hypotrochoids and epitrochoids a Spirograph produces, the Spirograph is a rigid, unwavering setting for a game.

I suppose this is why when I discovered Finger Spiro+ by Chlova, I had some reservations. Do not misinterpret – I think the Spirograph is a fantastic tool, that produces beautiful curves and lines in an increasingly circular shape, but its novelty lasts for a few hours, and then it’s over. There is a slight hypnotic quality to Finger Spiro, and other spirographs, in just tracing a line over and over and over, while watching this wheel move around within a larger wheel, your pencil wedged in one of the holes drilled into the rotor’s plastic side. As with physical Spirographs, in Finger Spiro+ you have a choice between different sized rotors, each of which, based on its size, produces lines of a different curve and degree (you may download more rotors (or gears) for a price if you desire). Each rotor also has a few holes that you may select with a tap, to change the degree of the line produced. There are 7 colors to choose from, 4 background canvases – of which each may be moved around a bit to allow for more drawings -, and you may choose to roll your spirograph in a clockwise or counterclockwise motion. Should you particularly proud of any one creation, you may take a picture of it using the app, and save it to an album, perhaps email to a friend.

The whole app is laid out very well, with pleasant graphics, but there are a few shortcomings. The 7 colors are what you’d find in a basic crayon deck, with the odd gray included, as well. Every kid loves gray… right? The background canvases are nothing spectacular, but given the surface is hardly as important at the drawing, this is a minor quibble. The background surfaces range from different woods to what look to be handpressed, custom papers, with dark blotches of the kind you’d find at Papyrus or some other high-end letterpress store.There are only 4, and there’s no option to upgrade the amount of canvasses you can have, so this feature remains pretty limited.

Finger Spiro+, itself, is very smooth, and the results fantastic, but once again there’s that debacle of longevity – seeing the designs emerge is fun for a few minutes, but after that it’s not terribly tempting to download more rotors to keep the idea fresh. Maybe if Finger Spiro+ strayed from the usual circular design and included rotors within stencils of different shapes, something more elliptical or bean-shaped (it can be done), just any other shape, then perhaps the game could hold a user’s interest more.

Manga comics are still a thriving business today, and anime will forever be an underground favorite – allegedly mainstream in some circles – and so today I present you, oh ye faithful readers, with Dress Up Studio by MoseCode, a manga style dress up app for kids – more specifically, for little girls. Let’s face it, all girls love to play dress-up, either with mommy’s clothes, auntie’s clothes, or dolls, and there has even been a popular series of Barbie computer games that focus on that one, ever-present talent of Barbie’s: fashion. I never liked dolls very much (I was taken to decapitating my Barbie’s heads and putting them on pencil stakes – very Lord of the Flies meets Ravenous, I know), but I did enjoy these paper dolls my grandmother would give me – I had to punch them out from their paper backdrop, and their clothes would be fitted by centering them over the body, and folding back tabs to keep them in place. I realize how very 1950′s this sounds, but somehow I found these dolls more endearing than the rubber, plastic kind. Artwork compared to toy, I suppose.

In any case, Dress Up Studio takes that paper doll type mystique and applies it to a digital setting, with three characters to choose from, and an endless array of outfits specific to each. Each girl seems to represent a classic Manga archetype: Kami is the prototypical outgoing one, with fingers held up in a quasi-peace symbol, one eye winking, and mouth open, presumably in a laugh. Her demeanor is one of flirty childishness, and her vibrantly colored blue hair and pink eyes are cosmic and alien, but completely typical, desirable even, in the Manga universe. Reese, meanwhile, is the angelic blonde, the pretty one, with wide open blue eyes, long golden tresses, and hands clasped near her face, as if in some warm, female invitation to fall in love with her. Emma is the bashful one, as indicated by her long, dark tresses with choppy, straight-across bangs, and contrasting pale face, all of which give her a mysterious allure, a quietude beneath those eyes staring straight into yours. Her hands are clasped in front, to complete that youthful glow of innocence, and her clothing matches her slightly dark demeanor in the manner of emo stripes and dark patterned shirts.

Of course, these are only the default looks for each girl – you can change their looks in countless ways once in the style section. A menu along the bottom will show six buttons that let you change her shirt, her pants, her hairstyle, her shoes, her eye color (a must for Manga aficionados – can’t live without that pink eye color), and her accessories. A home button takes you back to the main screen and a camera icon lets you take a picture for your every-growing compendium of Manga characters. I chose Emma and made her into a sweeping blonde, with blue eyes, wearing what I consider an outfit exhibiting country chic: a wide, flowing, a-line skirt, probably made with a thick cotton or canvas; big, clunky leather boots, made for trekking around open soil and cattle; a casual, striped long-sleeved shirt meant for protecting the skin from blustery wind with a chilly nip; and a long, skinny scarf, to complete the outfit, and for some added neck warmth. I was amused to note that one of her many accessories included a handbag with a cheerful Pomerian poking his head out – where would any girl be without her little lap dog?

While I may not have a particular fondness for Manga-related madness, and I found the in-app music to be grating and cloyingly sweet, the app managed to be cute and interactive enough to provide entertainment for little girls. Dress-up and playing house is so instinctual for girls, that I’m sure they would love toying around with pretty girls, giving them purses, and switching their pants for a skirt with polka dots. It’s too bad the Kami character is centered a bit offscreen, situated too far to the left, because her animal companions, when turned on, aren’t fully visible, half their bodies cut off by the screen. To add variety, the developers added 23 backgrounds and a few animations (bubbles when you move your finger across the screen), but none of these really add anything to the game. The backgrounds are changed by zipping your finger in a down or up motion, and they’re all of the bubble, girlish type motifs we would expect from Manga. But, dressing up dolls is dressing up dolls, and Dress Up Studio is worth a second look if you have any little girls. They may just like it.

BAANZAAII!!!!

These crazy flies are the real killers of Kill the Fly. The Kamikaze fly is but one of the many winged pests you will encounter in this strangely addicting app by Playsteria, an appropriately titled company name, if I may say so myself. Kill the Fly will definitely drive you to hysteria, if in a playfully frenetic way, with its onslaught on flies, bees, and other winged catastrophes waiting to dive toward the pile of poo which you’ve weirdly been enlisted to defend. In FowlPlay we used poo as a weapon – in this game, it’s something to be protected. Hmm, I’m sensing another themed week! I’m sure my boss would love for me to pitch Poop Week on Appstruck.

Poop Week or no poop week, Kill the Fly means protecting a pile of it, and using your fingers to smash any attempts by the flies to dive toward it, in pleasurable insanity. The game begins oddly, with cheery music of the pop diva variety, one that would belong in a casino lounge alongside men in drag a la the Birdcage – or, just a terrible commercial talking about how such and such pharmaceutical can change your life. I always focus on the musical elements in games, because good music can give extra thrust to

Hordes, upon hordes of flies - oh, and a bumblebee

a game, make it more enjoyable. This music is just so far wayward from the premise of this game, that it actually works. It’s just as kooky as the kooky bug illustrations – which, I might add, resemble cutesy stickers I could buy from Japantown at Kinokinuya Bookstore – and just as kooky as the funny, very human-sounding buzzz and eeerroooo noises the bugs make. The whole look of the game is very cutesy and Asian in some of the motifs, and in some of the sayings by “wise master” Xou Han like, “Water has never been as good as ground to smash flies.” Yes, yes, this is very true, given ground is solid and hard and water is, well, water. Thank you, oh wise one.

Why is it that squishing bugs in games is so much more satisfying than in life? Well, for one, squishing real flies involves a slight shriek from most people, followed by a slow peeling back of the swatter, or, god forbid, your thumb, accompanied by a stretched out “eeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwww.” Besides, when swatting a fly in life there is no splat, no squish, no sound of any kind other than the moan that escapes your lips. In this game, the squash sounds slightly curdled, rippling with blood and entrails (though there are none, only a blood splatter), along with a low, barely detectable crunch to round out a proper effect. It’s all so squishy and awesome, darting your fingers across the screen, tapping and squishing to your heart’s content. The housefly is of no concern, really – they buzz around in weird configurations, like those gnats that forever remain on the square trail they zip over your chair, and they usually never head toward the poo. They just know it’s there, somewhere. Their real purpose is to distract you in hordes while other, more impetuous insects make their appearance. The Kamikaze fly and the Fast fly are the two you really have to watch out for. Both make a straight beeline to the poo, with no other objective than to land, eat, and take away points from you. The Kamikaze yells BANZAI! and explodes like a bomb when you squish him; that is, if you can squish him, he’s a fast bugger, that one. The Fast fly is notable for his blue color and his varying sounds of eeeerrooooo, thhpptpppttt, nnnneeeeeeeeeerrrrr, and so forth. It’s pretty amusing, and he’s pretty easy to squish if you’re paying attention. The other two insects you see are the big, cumbersome large fly and bumblebee. Both sort of saunter around, just getting in the way with their large, thwap thwap sounds, and taking four or more hits until they finally perish beneath your thumb. They’re mostly annoying, though kind of pretty, physically.

Oh Xou Han, you never fail to disappoint.

You start the game in Paolo’s garden, and make your way through four rounds of that before gaining access to other levels. In Save the Crap mode, you protect the poo in one of three difficulty settings – Easy, Normal, Nightmare – whereas in Massacre Mode you just try to kill as many bugs as possible, dragging them this way and that, making sure combos and blood are an everlasting staple of the playing field. I prefer Save the Crap Mode, because mindless killing, while fun, doesn’t quite hold a candle to the poop game. In the poop game, the farther along in levels you get, the more obstacles and saving graces appear to add dimension to the game. Cacti, broken nails and glass, for example, wreak havoc on your thumbs when squishing plants, leaving blood fingerprints with your every tap and negatively impacting your score. Other obstacles appear in the form of water, sewer holes, and other purported “soft surfaces” that prevent you from squishing a bug in that setting. Tools of the bug-killing trade take the form of a large fly swatter, bug spray and more whenever things get too fly-ridden. In Nightmare mode, you’ll be using these a lot, because the ever-present swarm on screen will be driving you to hysteria in no time.

In the end, there’s really only one sentence I can recommend in advice. As wise master Xou Han says, with the gravest of sageness, “KILL THEM ALL.”

The app contains all the elements within the first game – alphabet flashcards with image and pronunciation tabs – but in addition, the developers tacked on two more game-oriented abilities that add a great deal more dimension that allows children to interact more. The See It, Say It section is a game where the user matches one of the three letters on top to the image pictured below. If a kite is shown, for example, and the letters K, J, Q, appear above, it’s up to the kid to figure out which letter works with the image, and then drag that letter onto the image. The letters are all drawn in a toy cube fashion, and

L for lion!

differentiate from each other with the use of different colors. The user may tap each block to hear the letter pronounced, and then tap the image to hear kite read aloud. The objective is for the user to logically reason which sounds mostly closely mirror each other, and therefore, which letter belongs to that word. Otherwise, if the user chooses incorrectly, the letter will simply disappear. Then it becomes a process of elimination – there are now only two letters left to choose, so obviously, it must be one of them, right? Eventually, your child will get the solution, right, and in the process, understand that J and Q have nothing to do with kite.When the correct letter is dragged onto the image, the image animates for a few seconds, as a reward for the user’s efforts.

The other new play option is Hear It, Hit It. In this section, an image appears below, as is customary, and three dots appear above, in the colors of blue, yellow and red. Each dot, when tapped, gives an audio clip of someone pronouncing a letter, such as “wuh” for W or “juh” for J. Once again, the user has to figure out which sound is appropriate for the image, and then drag that corresponding dot onto the image. If the selection is correct, the user is rewarded with a brief animation, sometimes children cheering and clapping. This section could definitely prove to be challenging for the young mind, and is definitely effective at encourage a memorization of sounds and their corresponding letters, and objects/animals that begin with that particular letter.

ABC Shakedown is what kids apps are meant to be – fun, interactive, and most of all, educational. For any child still learning his A,B,Cs and general language skills, this app is excellent for nurturing that beginning ability, and has a long shelf life due to the time it takes to acquire this ability. The animations could be livelier (how about a lion roaring instead of licking his lips?) to further engage the user, and some of the pronunciations are a little hard to interpret – the “f” sounds more like “shhh” and could just be a technical obstacles given microphones and recording equipment. Also, despite being very interactive, the app lacks any intuitiveness. You must read the directions to figure out how to use it – an older child or adult could obviously figure it out after some tinkering, but a young child definitely needs some direction. After initial instructions – a rubric how to use – it’s easy for a child to navigate. But, these are but a few flaws in an otherwise spectacular app.

fffff for fish!

People in this country tend to view bilingualism with an air of impressiveness, that it’s a rare skill few possess. They often reply, when asked if they speak another language, with astonishing sincerity coupled with a step back, “Oh god no, I don’t speak a word of Spanish.” There are many people who point to Europe as a role model, with its polyglot culture, and aspire for Americans to learn languages other than English – considering the large population of Spanish-speaking peoples in California, and the greater presence of China as a global power, it make sense diplomatically, to learn other languages. Given the United States’ position as a world power, a center of influence and global relations, it can seem embarrassing that many of our citizens cannot act as ambassadors for our country, only being able to communicate in their mother tongue. In some ways, it’s borderline lazy given our long-term status as the most powerful country in the world – English, after all, has long been considered the business language through which all other countries communicate. This may be changing, though, with China emerging as possibly a greater influence than the United States, and so our monolingualism has lately become an even larger issue of contention.

The developer of Little Pim Word Bag, Julia Pimsleur Levine, had such thoughts when she originally created the Little Pim concept in 2006. Having grown up bilingual, she felt there weren’t enough ways for a child in the United States to reap the benefits of a bilingual upbringing – foreign language classes usually don’t appear in public schools until junior high, and little to no educational programming was available for children to absorb, aside from maybe those Muzzy videos I, and the rest of my peers, remember from French class. The Little Pim DVD series is exceptional, has received many awards, and covers plenty of languages, including Spanish, French, Chinese, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, English, Arabic, German and Russian. The DVDs are heavily interactive, and involve many repetitions of phrases and words and concepts for children to watch and learn, much in the same way children imitate an adult’s word formations, later adapting these linguistic rubrics to their own, original thought. Given the exceptional nature of the DVDs, I had high expectations for the app by Animax, especially given the fairly limited supply of language apps peppering the App Store.

Little Pim Word Bag is cute, if lacking. Little Pim, himself, is as cute as ever, carrying his bottomless messenger bag wherever he goes, and pulling out objects of every type to share with you. I was a little disappointed that Little Pim only shares with you two languages – Spanish and French. It’s true, the original DVDs covered Spanish and French, possibly just French initially, and this app may very well just want to cover the original concept. I was hoping for Chinese to be included, though, instead of French, given its near vital importance today, but let’s face it: everyone loves the French language. It’s not entirely the most useful language, and it’s heavily romanticized, but many people desiring to learn another language favor French for its fluid and unique sound, resplendent with deep, guttural notes accented by a fluttering airiness, like the wind beneath a hummingbird’s wings. Chinese, also, is very difficult for Westerners to master, given its heavy reliance on pitch differences – one example would be that the sound “ma” depending on pronunciation, can mean either horse or mother. Regardless, I’m hoping the next Little Pim app will contain more languages to choose from.

The app is divided into three sections – eating and drinking, wake up smiling, and playtime – each of which contains its own unique set of words that correlate to the theme. The pictures for each section bob up and down, inviting your child to tap on them. Little Pim is shown in each, staring at you through googly red glasses, wielding a fork and knife, or laying back in redolence, happy obviously, from playing. For each section, Little Pim will bounce on screen, and introduce himself – “Hola! Yo me llamo pequeno Pim” for Spanish, and “Bonjour, je m’appelle petit Pim” for French. Little Pim will stand there on the grassy knoll waiting for you to tap him to begin the exercise; otherwise after several seconds, he’ll start on his own. Your child will watch as the Panda rummages about in his bag, and takes out something, which he’ll identify with an enlarged image of the object, and the written name beneath. For Eating and Drinking, Little Pim first brings out a cake, which miraculously remains pristine in all its chocolately goodness, and says the name aloud for the user: in Spanish, he says un pastel, and in French, he says un gateau, which funnily enough, almost sounds like un gato in Spanish, meaning cat. He’ll continue in this manner, until the section is complete; at any point, the user may tap one of the previous objects to hear the word repeated, and to give the image a second look.

Given my fluency in Spanish, I spent quite a bit of time brushing up on my basic French vocabulary (I was fortunate to begin both Spanish and French at an early age in private school, along with more intensive study in Junior High). My French accent isn’t the greatest – I have a tendency to roll my syllables together as in Spanish, and rumble my r’s, unconsciously – but despite being an adult, I really enjoyed listening to the bright music and reading aloud the names as they were voiced aloud to me. There’s no question: Little Pim Word Bag is an effective game, and it does have a trance-like quality to it. Besides, Little Pim is just so gosh darn cute. But, more languages would definitely be a great asset, as would a secondary feature in the app that would use the vocabulary learned in a contextual situation, possibly using the words together (“Let’s have lunch! What would you like to have?”) – having just a list of words may become boring, quickly, for most youngsters.

But, Little Pim Word Bag has its heart in the right place. Many people never become fluent in another language, and whatever bits and pieces they jumbled together in High School often go unused, and then, after a period of stagnation, most knowledge eventually just disappears. Starting off our kids young, on programs like the Little Pim series, can go a long way in at least instilling basic groundwork in languages other than English. By using the Little Pim Word Bag app, hopefully parents will see its benefit, and be inspired to check out the full DVD series.

DynaZoo is DynaCool!

DynaZoo is an interesting app. It’s supposedly for kids, but as an adult I found it pretty difficult… then again, my girlfriend does say I’m pretty childish sometimes, so take that with a grain of salt!

DynaZoo, by Apps4U, is a matching game on methamphetamine and it’s unapologetic about it – their sub-title is “Animal Matching Frenzy” and the game is just that: a frenetic frenzy. I dove right in to this app without reading the instructions and did OK, but I went back and read them and realized there were some things important in there that helped me out later, so I would recommend giving them at least a once over. For example, if there’s a particularly crowded region you can double-tap it and a “thunder” will sound and everything will shake and redistribute – pretty handy. Aside from a few intricacies the controls are simple: tap on an animal and find it’s pair. There are four levels of increasing difficulty. On Easy the animals are on a grid and shake themselves into a jumble of outlines; Medium is the same, but the animals redistribute faster; on Hard they redistribute rapidly, change size and flip horizontally; on Pro they redistribute, change size, flip and fade in and out! Despite the complications, I didn’t find that the game didn’t get too much harder with the higher levels, which is a good thing, because it’s pretty hard to begin with. After a few games I settled down and was able to drastically improve my time – oh yeah, it’s timed and your first score will make you feel terrible!

Animal overload!

The graphics are really cool. They remind me of various sand art videos you can find on YouTube – check one out here – only they’re way cooler. There’s a high-score section and a “Cool Stuff” section, the latter being an advertisement of sorts, but whatever, it’s unobtrusive.

I only have two suggestions, or issues with this app. First, once you’re in the game you have to exit the app to go back to the main screen, or lock the screen to pause the game – there’s no pause option. Second, if you make an incorrect match thunder strikes and everything is shaken up. but the two incorrect selections remain selected. You have to go back and deselect one or both in order to make a correct match. I found this extremely frustrating and time consuming. With so many animals in such a small area you’re bound to accidentally match two animals (I know I did) and feature that automatically resets your selection would be very helpful.

Despite these drawbacks I would recommend this for anyone over the age of 5 or 6 (female) and 25 (male).

Awhile back I wrote a review on Peekaboo Barn, exclaiming how cute and clever it was, piquing a child’s imagination to see what was behind those barn doors, making whinnying noises, or cock-a-doodle-doos. I enjoyed the app so immensely I included it in the article 6 Apps That Make Mom’s Life Easier, because the app served well as an entertaining distraction while mom was busy cleaning up all those toys little Ophelia left on the wayside in favor of mommy’s iPhone. In Night & Day Studio’s latest incarnation, they take the same concept away from the barnyard and into the wild.

A lion!

Peekaboo Wild had plenty of exotic animals to tickle your kid’s fancy, from lions and crocodiles to giraffes, hyenas, and my personal favorite, the baboon. The app takes place on the arid plains of Africa, with gently billowing yellow grasses, dried from the blazing orange and yellow sun overhead, and a lone acacia tree gently swaying in the background. The artwork is, once again, beautiful and slightly abstract, with a modernized feel despite the commercial application. Just as with Peekaboo Barn, you may opt for the narrated voice to be in either English or Spanish, and the voice, once again, comes from a cheery bubbly little girl. One by one, animals appear behind the rustling grass, making the noises for which they are known, the animal revealing itself once the grass is tapped. It’s an interesting experiment in animal call recognition – most kids in this

The hippopotamus

country are very familiar with dogs barking, cats meowing, and sheep baaing, but what about a cheetah’s yell? A hyena’s laugh? Or a baboon’s general monkeying around? It’s a good way for kids to become familiar with these other, more exotic but still commonplace animals.

Once the grass is tapped, the animal making a hullabaloo behind the wheaten field is revealed – a short animation of the animal roaring or sqwaking is done, and then the girl’s voice rings out, “ostrich!” in a happy, upbeat voice, along with the written name. And, just as in Peekaboo Barn, in Peekaboo Wild the animals are shown all together, in an entourage shot of wild beasts, once the user finishes cycling through all the animals. At the close of the app, the prairie settles to dusk, a soft red glow just along the horizon, and all the wild beasts wild no longer, sleeping together in a docile turn of events. It’s a sweet ending for any wild thing.

Goodnight.

Color Me!!! loading screen

Color Me!!!, by Izabela Zabek, is a coloring app for kids from 2-6 years old, so the app says, but really I don’t think it’s an app for anyone of any age. Don’t get me wrong, the app is presented very nicely and runs smooth; there are plenty of different drawings which one can color – there are sea creatures, mammals, birds and numbers; the graphics are nice and the previews of the drawings are of exceptional quality; there are nice features such as the color chooser sliding as you tilt the phone. The only problem is that the app lacks any kind of creativity. Here’s the app in a nutshell:

Choose a picture, move the slider and press on the screen to fill in a section of the picture.

Choose the drawing type

What’s the problem with that, you may ask? Well, how is this in any way stimulating? There are plenty of apps out there that are intuitive, pretty and stimulating, but this isn’t one. There is nothing here to stimulate hand-eye coordination or problem solving. In fact, the app is so well developed that it takes away from the functionality. Take, for example, the preview pictures – they’re very illustrious. Now, try re-creating the picture you see. The color pallette at the bottom of the screen does not allow for much of anything beyond the primary colors. There are different shades and different colors, but nothing that resembles the color in the previews. In fact, try to find brown or dark green, I dare you.

A seemingly cool feature this app has is the ability to shake the phone to reset the picture. “Neat”, I thought, when reading about it. But then I realized this was an app for kids. How will a child feel about losing his or her masterpiece on the way to school when the phone drops out of his or her hands as a result of mommy going too fast over a speed bump? The use of the built-in sensors is a good idea and can work, but a simple reset option (with an “Are you sure?” fail-safe) would work better. Sure, the parent may have to intervene, but they already have to intervene in order to export the photo to the camera roll or to Facebook (good idea, by the way, parents love to brag!).

1 is the loneliest number

One drastic change I would like to see would be to have the child color in the picture manually, as opposed to just pressing on the screen. Maybe the developer could have the app recognize the area of the screen first touched and only allow that to be colored until the finger is released. This may be difficult to implement, but I’m sure there’s a way to keep the children in the lines while still allowing for creative license.

There are some good ideas in Color Me, and it was developed with care, but the app just isn’t thought out and executed well. Color Me!!! may be worth taking a look at, if your child needs a distraction; or better yet, if you need your child distracted. But all in all it doesn’t stand up to criticism, let alone practical use. And if there’s any demographic that really uses things, it’s children.

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