Alien Buddies © Artgig Apps
Since we received our iPad last month my two year old son has become obsessed with playing games on it. On one occasion I walked into his room first thing in the morning and instead of being greeted with "Mummy!" instead I heard "my an-he burd iPad?" We do regulate the amount of time he gets to spend with the iPad (and our iPhones too) but I also recognise the educational value in many of the available apps for his age group and I'm keen on anything that teaches him something new in an engaging way.
The matching game © Artgig Apps
Alien Buddies is a new app from Artgig Apps that features join-the-dots, jigsaw puzzles, a sticker book and match-the-shapes games with levels of varying difficulty for kids of different abilities. The suggested age range is from three to seven years, but my two-year-old has no problems playing all but a few of the games. His favourite activity is the matching game where you drag aliens into waiting UFOs, matching up the symbol on their tummies with that on the waiting ship. The levels start simply with matching colours and shapes, progress through matching letters and numbers to advanced levels where the child presses the ship to hear a word spoken aloud and picks the alien to match it. The letters level is split in three, you can choose to match lowercase, uppercase or lower to upper where the aliens have lowercase letters on them but the ship asks for upper; the numbers level are also split in three with options "1 – 10″, "1 – 20″ or "1 – 50″. My toddler loves dragging the brightly coloured aliens around the screen and hearing the funny noises they make as they whizz off in their spaceship when he matches them correctly. I've also noticed a vast improvement in his knowledge of colours and his ability to recognize them correctly since he has played the app, as well as a developing interest in knowing his letters.
The dot-to-dot game © Artgig Apps
I wasn't sure how my son would get on with the dot-to-dot game as he cannot yet recognise his numbers to connect the sequence correctly. Here the app offers a fantastic solution, a "please help" option for younger players that lights up the next dot in a different colour as you connect your way through the design. By explaining to my son that he always needs to find the red dot, he can do even the hardest – 17 dot – games by himself which is great for boosting his confidence, I love hearing him complete a game and shout "I do it mummy!" As he connects the dots, each number is spoken aloud and I often hear him repeating them as he goes. Considering that I am trying to teach him the very beginnings of counting (right now he counts "two, three, two, three" and that's it), any game that has him actually wanting to say his numbers aloud in sequence is welcome in my house.
A half-completed four-piece jigsaw puzzle © Artgig Apps
The jigsaw puzzles are the only part of the app which I feel could use some improvement, not in the design of the puzzles themselves but in the responsiveness of the app itself. The pieces don't slide around the screen very easily on our copy leading to my son getting quite frustrated, even the adults often struggle to persuade the pieces to move where we want them to go and pieces sometimes get stuck right at the edge of the screen and have to be carefully coerced back. When it is working well the jigsaws are great, the pictures are all of funny little aliens and each design can be played with either four, six or eight pieces so children can progress gradually to more complex puzzles at their own pace. The puzzles are shaped rather than rectangular so finding the right space for each piece is easier for young children as they can match up the shapes of arms, eye-stalks and tentacles to the silhouette of the board on the screen.
Sticker scene created by my toddler © Sophie Brown
Completing the different games unlocks stickers that appear in the sticker book part of the app. Here you can select from eight different backgrounds and create your own scenes from the dozens of stickers that you can unlock; my favourite so far has to be the rather perturbed looking cat in a spacesuit! Stickers can be used repeatedly and their size can be changed by simply using two fingers to pull apart or push together, my son picked this up in just a few minutes. My only issue with the sticker book is that a camera button is located at the bottom of the screen along the scrolling bar of sticker choices. When it is pressed, and with toddler fingers it gets accidentally pressed a lot, it saves the current design to the camera roll. My iPad (and consequently my iPhone as they are synced together on the iCloud) is therefore always full of these sticker scenes until I remember to go through and delete them.
Alien Buddies is a fantastically entertaining, educational app that manages to seamlessly combine a learning experience into games that kids will want to play simply because they are fun. It is currently the game my two-year-old chooses most often when I hand over the iPad and it's one that I am happy for him to play as I know he is learning from the time he spends with it. I couldn't really ask for much more in an app – just move that camera button!
Alien Buddies is available in the iTunes App Store for $1.99. A copy of this app was provided free for this review.
Sophie Brown is a busy stay at home mother living in England with her husband, one year old son and two middle aged cats. She is currently studying for a Bachelor's Degree in Natural Sciences and also writes the blog The Geek Arts. Sophie can frequently be found wasting time on Twitter.
