Disney recently released the classic story of Dumbo as an interactive app for the iPhone and iPad. For children young and old the story of Dumbo is an endearing classic and while this interactive story book to the original story and artwork it also and features such as coloring pages, puzzles and a musical instrument in the form of a Calliope straight from the pages of the book.
The story itself is beautifully recreated in its electronic form and has well delivered audio to so that your child can listen to the story as well as read it. The pages come to life with animated action too which brings the story to life even more.
One if the most impressive features though is the ability to record your own audio of each individual page. You can do this one page at a time and when turned on the narration will be you voice and not the origami voice. This will be awesome if for any reason your going to be away from your child as this can be one way to stay close.
The three additional features are fun too. Playing the Calliope is fun and sounds very authentic. You can either freestyle or follow the tutorial to play along with the tune. The puzzle provides 3 virtual jigsaw puzzles for you to put together and each has 3 difficulty levels which increases the number of pieces in the puzzle.
Also pulling from the pictures in the book are the coloring pages. In these pages you have a paint brush, pencil and a palette of colors to color in the picture. You can save your handiwork if you want to come back to it later or email your completed masterpiece.
A nice added feature is the ability to personalize the splash screen of the app, not only with your child’s photograph but also their name which you can either type in or write in using your finger or stylus.
It’s no surprise that Disney would produce such a great app but it’s good to see it come to fruition.
This universal app cost $1.99 and is available in the App Store now, whether you are wanting to relive the story from your childhood or enjoy it with your child or grand children this app is a great way to do it.
[rating: 5/5]What we like
What to know
[rating: 2/5]
‘A Boat Message’ for iPad is a storybook-style app for children ages 4 and up. It is a quiet-time adventure about an origami paper boat that sails off to a variety of adventures with the mission of writing a letter.
A Boat Message is a finite, 16-page storybook. The story, the graphics, the music are all geared for young children, preschoolers in my estimation. However, it assumes the user can read. You must read the story in order to know how to interact with the screen.
Some screens require no interaction and the “next” arrow doesn’t appear for a few seconds to give you time to read the text. Only a very quick reader will be done before the arrow appears.
Other screens require you to interact with the graphics before moving on. Often the object that you are to manipulate is highlighted with a glow to identify it. But where it is to be placed is not so obvious, and you must read the text to have any idea of where to put it. With enough trial and error, I suppose you could find the sweet spot. But I imagine this to be very frustrating to users who either can’t read the text or didn’t understand it. Even I was unsure on some screens.
This app has great potential. I think it could benefit a lot from a toggled “read-it-to-me” option. And maybe a highlight glow of the destination for objects after a certain amount of time has elapsed.
In all, it’s a nice quiet-time app for small children. But I think this is an app that is somewhat missing its audience. I also think it’s a bit high-priced for something that takes less than 5 minutes to complete and doesn’t have much repeat value.
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If you’ve ever dabbled in origami, the Japanese art of paper folding, then the chances are that you started with something simple like this origami boat. It’s this boat that is the vehicle of choice in this water based racing game.
After picking the color of your paper boat you are launched to the starting line ready for a head to head race against 3 other computer controlled boats. The racing is the same across three different racing modes. Practice mode allows you to take your boat out into the calm waters on your own and practice your sailing skills. This is something you may want to do especially if you are going to use the unique acceleration process of blowing into the iPhone’s microphone!
Don’t worry if you are an iPod Touch owner you can still test drive the blowing method if you plug in an external mic. Having said that it seems to be more of a gimmick than a legitimate control method as the alternate control method of an accelerate and break button on the bottom left and right corners of the screen seems much more responsive and to succeed through all of the cups including the ‘Very Hard Cup’ you are going to want the best controls you can possibly have. Do give it a go through, it’s fun for a while and to show off to your friends and relatives.
Quick race allows you to hone your racing skills against 3 other opponents around any of the 5 tracks while Arcade mode allows you to test yourself against the best Paper Boat racer’s out there in 5 different cup competitions. The cups are raced using 5 different water based tracks that appears to be located in someone’s backyard. The pool track is littered with rubber rings, rubber ducks and other water based obstacles and it’s your task to navigate these items while racing through a bunch of checkpoints.
To accommodate the microphone control option the game is played with the iPhone/iPod Touch in portrait mode which is unusual for a racing game but it actually works, in fact using the accelerometer to steer your boat feels more responsive when holding the iPhone/iPod Touch in the way.
After a quick practice I launched the Arcade Mode and set out on the ‘Very Easy Cup’ which is very appropriately titled as each of the four races that make up the cup were won easily with none of the competitors even in site at the end. The paper based style of the game looks good and while the backgrounds in the race are pretty minimal the pool race track itself looks nice, although it would be nice to see the water actually affect the movement of the boat. Unfortunately though the animation of your opponent boats is often a little jerky and can be off putting especially during tight races.
It’s unlikely that you will find any problems winning the cups until you get to the Hard and Very Hard levels and even after a couple of goes you’ll have them completed without too much hassle. For once even the integration of OpenFeint doesn’t offer much additional value to the game as the achievements are only based on winning race’s rather than more unusual achievements such as ‘played as all colors’, ‘hit 5 rubber ducks’ or ‘boat sinks’ which would have been nice.
The game is fun for a while but once the novelty of the blowing technique has ended the game is limited in options and once completed has limited reason to be revisited.
The Good
The Not So Good
Price: $0.99 (iTunes Store Preview)
Released: Mar 19, 2010
Reviewed Version: 1.0
Size: 26.3 MB
Language: English
Seller: Digital Bridges Limited t/a I-play
Copyright © 2010 MusiGames Studio – D’Accord Music Software SA. All Rights Reserved
Rated 4+