The game presents you with icons and blank spaces to fill out the words. To make your life a bit easier there are jumbled alphabets to choose from to help you guess the meaning of the icons. If you get stuck you can choose to either post the trivia to your Facebook wall and have your friends help you out or use hints available within the game. Each correct answer earns you $1 (virtual game currency) and can be used to purchase hints. If you run out of the in-game currency, but still want to use a hint you can always use in-app purchase to get more $$$.

Visually the game is very minimalistic in its design and goes well with the iOS 7 flat theme. The user interface is intuitive and mostly gesture based.  Flow studio, the developers behind ‘Iconic – Guess The Name Quiz From Picture Icons’ (available for FREE) have included more than 200 hand-drawn icons in the game. The cryptic nature of these icons vary from representing the exact word to giving subtle hints to form the basis of your thinking to solve the puzzle.

The game requires you to have decent knowledge about movies, music, and  famous people. For example, if you haven’t watched the movie Dancing with Wolves or heard about the rock band Alice in Chains, it may take you a while to crack the puzzle. The developers have promised more categories in the future. After solving each puzzle you are presented with a short excerpt from Wikipedia which includes information about the movie, music or person you just guessed.

If you get stuck on a certain puzzle and run out of available hints and don’t want to buy coins, the only option left is to wait for your Facebook friends to help out or try being creative while searching on Google. There is no skip option. This sometimes can have a negative impact on the player. Being able to skip a puzzle and then coming back to it later could encourage the player to continue playing and then come back to the unsolved ones. The current version lacks this feature.

The game comes with a single player mode. There is no timer mode, no multiplayer and no achievements to unlock. It is unclear if the developers are working on these features. Adding different modes and achievements will further enhance the gaming experience and give the game a longer shelf life.

Once you start filling out the blank spaces with the available alphabets there is no way to rearrange them. You have to resort to tapping on the incorrectly placed alphabet and then replacing it. It would’ve been nice if the developers allowed the player to just drag and change the position of the alphabets.

Overall, Iconic for iPhone is a fun and challenging trivia game that successfully manages to ignite that ‘Ah! ha!’ expression.

Touch Reviews [rating: 3.5/5]

Finding Nemo Storybook Deluxe

For those of you that have downloaded any of the Disney Storybooks before you know that you are in for a treat as they bring the books to life on the iPhone and iPad.

Across the 28 interactive virtual pages of the book you can either read the story, have it read to you by the narrator or record the words and have those played back. This is great for your children to practice and listen back to their reading of for a parent to ‘virtually’ read the book to thier child when their not around.

Each page is beautifully illustrated, animated and can be interacted while the narration is clear and easy to listen too.

The storybook also includes additional activities including a matching game, 6 puzzles of increasing difficulty, 6 paintings and a talking Dory which acts similar to the talking animal games that are available.

At $6.99 it’s not cheap but it is an engaging way to re-live the Finding Nemo story.

Finding Nemo Interactive Comic

The Finding Nemo Interactive Comic re-tells the story of Finding Nemo in a panel by panel comic book. You can either have the panels automatically appear or tap and swipe the screen to move through the story.

For your creative children you also get a step by step guide to how to draw the four main protagonists and you can either draw them directly onto the iPad or use the skills you learn and draw them elsewhere too.

Finding Nemo Interactive Comic is a universal app and is available from the App Store now for just $1.99

A Snappy Christmas 3D Review: A storybook for kids based on the Snappy Dragons character. While the character is cute, the book is lacking in many areas.

The app is a reading book for children and offers options between English and French, and between Read By Myself or Read To Me. There are also three games included that give you a bit more to do than just the short story.

First the story itself, the plot felt a little weak and the characters were distant. Snappy and his friend Meline build a snowman in the woods but are missing a key piece until they get some help from Santa. Good enough for kids, I suppose, but there’s no real connection built with the characters.

The design itself has issues. First, the cursive font that was chosen is not suited for young children. It was difficult to read from time to time and would be hard for kids to identify some of the letters. And some words were highlighted in different colors, which might lead you to believe they were emphasized or interactive. They weren’t. Also, the narrator made an error and spoke an extra word that wasn’t printed. That is a critical error in a reading book for children.

Then there’s the technical side. The 3D layers effect was best thing about this app. And some of the animations were also good. But I had continual problems with the app crashing, even after an update was released. And it only works in one orientation that was upside down for most iPads with cases.

On the positive side, the app had a classic appeal and characters with potential. The UK English accent was engaging and clear. The sound effects added to the story. And adding a few simple games to the app gave it a bit more bang for the buck. There’s actually some good potential here. Potential.

A Snappy Christmas 3D disappoints in its execution, but leaves room for improvement. With a few tweaks and maybe some additional background on these two characters’ relationship (I mean how does a little girl come to have a dragon as a best friend?), there’s an opportunity for a successful series of books. While I might pass on this title, I’d be interested to see what they do with it in the future.

What we like:

• 3D effect background responds to tilting
• English or French

What to know:

• Story and characters pretty weak
• Doesn’t rotate – only works in one orientation
• Crashed repeatedly
• Font difficult to read and not suited for young children

Vocabador Review

There are two parts to this app. First there is the training side where you can review over 400 words split into easy, medium and hard categories, or as this is a wrestling game categorized as lightweight, middleweight and heavyweight. Each word is presented in flash card format with the word on one side and the details of the word on the other side which you can flip by simply tapping the screen.

Once you feel that you are ready you can pit yourself against the 12 wrestlers as they challenge you to pick the correct definition from 4 possible answers. This isn’t as easy as it sounds especially as you are up against the clock so it may take you a few times to beat some of the bigger wrestlers that provide the sternest of challenges, and 4 wrong answers will get your metaphorically thrown out of the ring.

The game is beautifully presented and is easy to navigate whether you want to simply use the flash cards for learning, challenge the wrestlers or both everything is easily accessible and slick.

It would be nice if you could play previously completed challenges without have to reset all your progress and for households where multiple users share a single iPhone/iPod touch the ability to have multiple profiles would have been nice.

Vacabador {$1.99} is one of the most fun and unique ways to increase your vocabulary and will help both young and old alike.

What we like:

• Unique way to increase your vocabulary
• Fun for the whole family
• Easy navigation

What to know:

• No way to repeat levels
• No multiple profiles

Gallery

Word Solitaire: Aurora is a fun solitaire game which uses letters and words instead of the usual pack of playing cards. When starting out there is an easy tutorial to follow. The aim is to use all the cards on the board to form words. Each card has one letter on it. You move the cards on to another card just like you would expect in a normal solitaire game, but this time you are spelling words out. To move a letter you just drag and drop. You can also move a group of letters.

You keep moving the cards and making words until you have turned over all the face down cards. When that is done you finish the level when you have used all the cards to spell a word. You can tell when you have completed a level by the top right button. If it is a pause you must carry on, if it indicates a play button press it and move onto the next level.

As you go you earn points. When you make a word at the top of the list where the word is formed it will show you what you scored in points for that word. Each letter as a different value in points and depending on the amount of letters in the word these will all make your score.

Along the way you may come across a wildcard which is an open card which can be changed to any letter. Once you have chosen a letter though you can’t change it to a different one. They do come in handy though when you get yourself stuck.

At the bottom of your screen you will see a sun, this is where you can burn cards that you can’t use. You are limited to how many times you can burn though depending which mode you are playing. Also at the bottom is the deck of unused cards which you can use if you get stuck and need another card.

There are three modes to play, the quick play, campaign and global.

In Campaign mode will most certainly keep you busy. There are 250 levels to work through starting out obviously easy and getting harder as you progress. As you work your way through you will come to milestones. These are like check in points really, so that if you ever give up suddenly when you go back to play you start from that milestone.

Finally global mode is where you play against anyone from around the world! There is a new board downloaded everyday and all the scores go on the global score board.

The user interface is very well laid out and it’s very easy to move the cards around. The graphics are nice and colorful with soothing music in the background. The game is also integrated with Game Center.

Word Solitaire: Aurora offers great replay value. When you have finally completed the campaign mode you can still play in other ways without the worry you might have played that level. For the small price you pay you are receiving a game that is definitely worth it!

Pros

• 3 modes.
• Great replay value.
• Good Graphics and easy to use.

Cons

• None!

$0.99 (View in iTunes)
Category: Games
Updated: Nov 08, 2010
Current Version: 1.0.1
1.0.1 (iOS 4.0 Tested)
42.7 MB
Language: English
Seller: Candywriter
© 2010 Candywriter, LLC
Rated 4+
Requirements:Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.0 or later