Category Archives: good for kids

Doodle Cannon War

Posted on by

Doodle Cannon War is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Doodle Cannon Wars! Now with more vitamin D!

I’m going to start this review right off the bat by saying that I absolutely love Doodle Cannon War! I haven’t been this in engrossed in an iPhone game since I purchased Doodle Jump (a different game from a different developer) a couple months back. Anyone who’s ever played a video game can sense when a game just feels right when they play it. Doodle Cannon War has that tangible feel only a few games I’ve played on the iPhone have. The guys and gals at infiworks have truly created a game so fun and challenging that if it weren’t for the game crippling glitch in level nine, chances are, I probably would have bought it! I’ll tell you more about that later in the review.

The object of the game is to blow up the skulls in each level using the bombs in your cannon. It sounds simple but to get your bomb anywhere near the skulls in each level you’ll have to angle your cannon just right and make sure the power behind your shot doesn’t fire your bomb too hard or too soft. This requires a steady hand, logical thinking, and some luck. To get a good score you’ll have to blow up the skulls using the least amount of bombs in as little time as possible.

Like most games on the iPhone, Doodle Cannon Wars has a bit of a control problem. It only uses a single touch to control the power and angle of the cannon. This can be a bit of a pain when you’re trying really hard to get the angle just right because as long as your finger is pressed on the screen the power behind your shot will continue to go up. This means that you’ll have to quickly judge the angle and power when you’re taking a shot. For the sake of making the game less reliant on luck and more on skill, I think the game would benefit greatly from separating these two actions.

Of course, separating the angle control from the power control will do absolutely nothing as long as the glitch in level nine is still there crippling this game! As soon as level nine starts, the frame rate slows down to a crawl, making the game virtually unplayable. That’s over 40 levels of Doodle Cannon War that won’t be able to be played! I would wait until infiworks fixes this bug before purchasing this app.

iTunes Link – Doodle Cannon Wars

Version 1.0

Reviewed on iPhone 3G 3.1.3

A riveting menu screen! Now if only you could hear the awesome background music!
Sadly, level nine will be the farthest I will be able to get until the next update.
Maybe I'm just plain bad at this game but it took me over a hundred tries to beat this...
I pretty much owned this level
It's about as difficult as it looks... Only those blocks were moving when I was playing.


Q&F: Kideos

Posted on by

Q&F: Kideos is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

If you have little ones like I do then Kideos might be for you. Earlier Media brings the aggregation of kid videos to your device.

I don’t have the time to comb through YouTube for kid videos so I was hopeful for this app. The app does do just that, it just does it in a very poor way. The videos are supposed to be organized by age groups but every video seemed to have the tag for 0-2 and not every video was geared for a kid of that age. The categories tab has a large yet redundant list to choose from , and the Wiggles section has zero videos. So why have that as an option? To top it off I can’t ever seem to get through more than 3 videos without the app crashing.

Great concept, bad execution. I’ll keep the app until the next update in hope of some major bug fixes.

iTunes Link – Kideos

Version 1.0

Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS 3.1.2


SlidR

Posted on by

SlidR is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

A take on a ‘sliding’ puzzle game, SlidR takes a photo, divides into square segments, and forces it upon you, the mighty adventurer, to slide the photo to correctness before the evil dragon* destroys your village and the helpless peasants.

The app has a slick, clean interface and a variety of high quality pics to choose from. An especially clever feature was the option to provide your own photos from your album or camera roll, as some pictures make a substantially more interesting puzzle than others.

For a dollar, this app is a worthy investment for those searching for a casual puzzler, something to idly whittle away battery life on your iPhone or iPod Touch. As an added bonus, a couple of codes were graciously provided by the dev, Critical Fever, so a few lucky ones can save a dollar and spent on something less epic.

*Dramatization. There is no dragon, evilness, villages or peasants. However, you are still a mighty adventurer. And you still get a picture of an elephant’s rear end, so that kind of makes up for it. I guess.

Vikings, attack!
Enough to stump the most hardened slidR veteran.
Our consolation prize. I named him Henry.
We may be an ultra-powerful app review site, but we still have no idea on how to get rid of this from our gallery.

iTunes link – slidR

Version 1.0.6

Reviewed on iPod Touch 3.1.2


Where’s Waldo? The Fantastic Journey

Posted on by

Where’s Waldo? The Fantastic Journey is a post from: Best Iphone Apps Review Website

Imagine a game with pictures straight out of your favorite childhood picture finding book. Now combine that with the technology of an iPhone and the great game play from Ludia. Add a some cute music, bundle it all together and you get  Where’s Waldo? The Fantastic Journey. This app is a Where’s Waldo book with some extras. The game is set up as an adventure game where you follow Waldo, Whitebeard the Wizard, Wendy, and other characters through a journey to collect the 12 mystical scrolls. When you collect all 12 scrolls, Whitebeard the Wizard will reveal to Waldo an important secret that Waldo has been searching for. At the starting you can choose normal game play or kids. The kids version is noticeably easier as it will make sure the item/person you are looking for is always in the area it brings you (in other words, you don’t have to move the screen view around).  The first few levels are tutorials and guide you through the game play. Each level is basically set up the same: you get the entire screen open to search for the characters, then you get parts of the picture sectioned off to help you locate some items. Your companion, Spot, will provide you with hints if you are ever stuck. What made this game interesting was that they also had some items marked with a diamond or star. The diamond would lead you exactly to where one of the hidden items are, and the star would present a mini game where you catch the stars to try and obtain a perfect score. At the end of each level, you get ranked based on speed. You can get 1-5 stars. As you make your way through the game, you meet more of Waldo’s friends and enemies and face more challenges. The only down side of the otherwise great game is that you can’t zoom in/out. I found that using only your finger and the small screen of your iPhone was a bit challenging to locate some things and would have liked to be able to pinch and zoom in or out so that I could see more of the picture at once.  Where’s Waldo is currently $2.99, so if you are looking for a fun app to kill time or something to keep your child occupied during a car trip, you should definitely get this app.

Where’s Waldo video




I found him!
Playing as Wendy

iTunes Link – Where’s Waldo? The Fantastic Journey

Version 1.0

Review on an iPhone 3G OS 3.1.2


App Sale: Styx Halloween

Posted on by

App Sale: Styx Halloween is a post from: Best Iphone App Review Website

Styx Halloween is on sale for free – normally $2.99

The further you go, the more different kinds of Halloween faces you have to contend with

The further you go, the more different kinds of Halloween faces you have to contend with

Styx Halloween is one of those match 3 games where you run your finger across matching units that are either touching or diagonal from each other. I guess that technically makes it a “match as many as you can” game and the combination of great graphics and tons of powerups makes this a pretty fun Halloween diversion!

The game comes with three modes: Chains, Time Trial, and Puzzle. Chains and Time Trial are both very similar in that your goal is to find as many chains as possible, and Puzzle forces you to figure out how to eliminate groups of Halloween icons in the right order so that no individual pieces are leftover.

EMV Software built in a global scoreboard and made Styx Halloween iPod-friendly, so I’d advise you to go get this app while it’s still free! The App Store page says this game is on sale for 2 days only, and the price went down 2 days ago, so it may go back to its original $2.99 price any minute now.

iTunes Link – Styx Halloween
Version 1.4
iPhone 3G OS3.1.2


MouthOff

Posted on by

MouthOff is a post from: Best Iphone App Review Website

I’ve never been a huge fan of apps that show a mouth that you hold in front of your face, but I have to admit that ustwo has put together a pretty good app here! I mean, if you’re gonna replace your mouth with your iPhone, you might as well do it with MouthOff.

When you hold this app over your face and start talking, your selected mouth will react to your iPhone’s mic and move along with you. Naturally this means that if you have an iPod Touch you’ll need a headset & mic to get that effect… imagine what a jackass you’ll look like… but it can be done!

MouthOff comes equipped with no less than 41 mouths created by a group of top-notch illustrators. Four “Hell-oween” mouths are included along with 12 “Signature” mouths and 25 Original mouths. Show-offs can make a MouthOff video by uploading your silliness to YouTube and tagging it with the word showusyourmouthoff and your video will appear on the ustwo website.

If you’re looking for a way to incorporate your iPhone into a Halloween costume this weekend, this might be the way to go!

iTunes Link – MouthOff
Version 2.1
Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS3.1.2

Mouths aplenty in this app
Spooky!
Pumpkin mouths are so hot! Get it... hot? Eh nevermind
Signature Series mouths are craaaaazzzyyyyy
Original Mouths for all occasions
I've been thinking about capping all my teeth with gold for real
Eat enough candy this Halloween and your tongue might actually turn green


GhostWriter

Posted on by

GhostWriter is a post from: Best Iphone App Review Website

Scrawling evil messages across photos in blood is soooo messy! GhostWriter will do it for you, and after you take your photo it’ll even throw in some Ghoulish Miasma if you want it to.

Ghoulish Miasma is really just some weird-looking orange fog that you probably won’t want on very many of your pics (don’t worry, it’s optional), but the spooky fonts comes in two varieties, Angered Spirit and Blood Writ, and they ain’t bad. GhostWriter comes with six innocent default messages that you can select individually or at random, and if you want to really damn someone to hell you can type in your own custom message! Sweet.

The thing this app does that’s a little different is that, after you take a pic, the app will fade the text and Miasma in slowly while it plays a Halloween sound effect. This feature may not sound like much, but I guess it adds a little something to that moment of unbridled excitement when you first show the pic to whoever just said ‘Cheese’ for you. The animation and sound are strictly in-app, but the pic you just took can be saved or emailed with a quick tap.

If this app has one major shortcoming it’s the inability to apply the Ghost Writing to camera roll pics! You’d think this very basic feature would be included, yet “Take Picture” is the only option available. What this means is that you need to set your text (unless you’re cool with going random) before you take the pic. If you’re not satisfied with the bloody text that gets automatically applied to the pic you just took, then you gotta do the photo again and listen to everyone groan while you go into Settings to choose or type in the text you want.

Hopefully Cute Logic will remedy this with a future update, but until that happens all I can say is Buyer Beware! What GhostWriter currently does, it does well, but I think the omission of the apply-to-pics-already-taken feature is going to be a dealbreaker with a lot of Halloween partygoers and trick-or-treaters.

iTunes Link – GhostWriter
Version 1.0
Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS3.1.2

Boo! This screen is missing a major function
The default messages are all pretty innocent
I love the Add Message feature
My dog's not a fan of the Ghoulish Miasma
Landscape photos are handled nicely
That says BURN in hell... yeah, I wrote this message myself!


Treat Street

Posted on by

Treat Street is a post from: Best Iphone App Review Website

Need a diversion to keep the toddlers busy? Treat Street should fit the bill, for this week anyway!

Treat Street is a painfully cute trick-or-treating game where the goal is the same as in real life: ring a lot of doorbells and accumulate as much candy as you possibly can. There’s no score to keep and no possible way to lose… except for the rare occasion when a mean neighbor gives you something weird like an insect instead of candy.

You start off by choosing your costume with a 3-piece mix & match costume builder, and while you’re making your way down the neverending street you can check out your loot with the candy bag icon in the bottom right of the screen.

This is Elf Farm’s first release and they’re off to a great start with this very nicely made app. The game concept is super simple by design but the artwork and production values are awesome, and if it keeps your kids quiet for five minutes then it’s a dollar well spent.

iTunes Link – Treat Street
Version 1.0
Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS3.1.2

Something tells me this kid gets beat up a lot at school
Tap the owl and other props for Halloween-y sound effects
Ring the bell or knock on the door
Hey, this ain't a piece of candy!
And you wonder why your kids are hyperactive head cases