The Free App Quest Continues! Animals and Christmas Adventures

One of the free apps i came across in my searches was Pet the Animals. It sounded cute but there is nothing more damning than when a four year old uses and app for two seconds and emphatically asks for a "new game." I had to agree with Wormie that Pet the Animals is hurting. The premise is pet the animal on the screen and the animal will "buzz" with excitement and make the appropriate sound. Dog's bark, horses neigh, cows moo. The graphics look like cheap stock photos and the app looks worse than AOL 2.5. Add in a overdose of the vibrate function and you've created one of the most popular free apps in the iTunes Free library. Strong work Apple.

Wormie got it right away and i actually think she was stunned at the stupidity...she had a look on her face like, "There is more right?" Sadly i couldn't find anything else. I did make the mistake of hitting the info button where users are prompted to buy other applications including Bikini Baristas and a WTF moment, apps that sound so lame they can only be real.

Age Range: 2-3
Difficulty: 4/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel : 1/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 1/5 (5 being helpful)

Wormie has gotten pretty good at navigating herself around my menu's and found one of the apps I was lining up for her to test on her own. The Christmas Card Match game was a free seasonal app similar to the Halloween matching game i reviewed in October. Wormie started it up and played a few games before making her way back to Santa's Cookies which I reviewed two weeks ago. The Christmas Card Match really wasn't in the spirit of Christmas cards but it was 1. free and 2. very Christmassy. My only complaint were the sounds were a little too "Space Invaders" for me so I guess the a publisher couldn't get his hands on any seasonal bells or something. That said I don't think Wormie minded too much since she played it for a good 5 minutes before moving on. All said and done I was impressed that Wormie made her way back to Santa's Cookies and proceeded to use the app for the rest of a car ride to day care which was another 10 minutes. I might have underestimated Santa's cookies!

Age Range: 3-5
Difficulty: 3/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel : 3/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 3/5 (5 being helpful)

SantasCookies is Free But Not to Filling!

It is very likely that Christmas will kill me and while I am using iPhone to track present shopping I really was hoping for some cool Christmas applications. My “Free App Review Week” didn’t work out quite as I planned (house remodel, work crisis) I figured free Christmas apps was my next target.

I searched high and low and first decent free Christmas app I could download was called SantaCookies. The idea is cute; you decorate cookies to be left for Santa. The start function is straight forward; you just touch the screen and are in the app. At first I had some trouble figuring out that to decorate the cookies you had to press the cookie decorations in the bottom navigation. The tricky part was that the decorations would appear in the middle of the four cookies to be decorated, when I was looking to drag it up to the spot I wanted to place it. I showed Wormie and she got it right away. Her bad habits had not been trained like mine.

Wormie spent a good 15 minutes playing with the app the first time I gave it to her. After her initial session she never spent much time with the application again. There were additional little features like you can leave a note for Santa and save the cookies you decorated to your photo album but those were not of any interest to Wormie. Overall I would rate this as a good free download with some seasonal appeal but in the larger scheme of things it will get deleted shortly after the holidays.

Age Range: 3-5
Difficulty: 3/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel : 3/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 2/5 (5 being helpful)

Price:Free

Peekaboo Barn - A Solid "Lite" Small Child App

I picked up Peekaboo Barn based on a recommendation from a friend who said her daughters were really into it. I went for the free version and got Wormie started right away. The start button was easy for her to figure out and the game play was well done. Here's a quick run down. Open to a barn scene. Barn shakes, touch doors, reveal animal, animal makes noise, door closes, repeat.

As per all "Lite" apps there are only a few animals to cycle through where in the full fledged app there are a supposedly a bunch more. I swear i read someplace there is a night time barn party scene. That sounds a little too Cinimax for me, but that could be a mis-read. Wormie liked the app, but it was a little too young for her. I'd peg this for 2-3 year olds since the game play is simple and tight. In addition the limited number of animals made it a pretty quick play session.

Age Range: 2-3
Difficulty: 4/5 (5 being easy)
Look & Feel : 4/5 (5 being cool)
Parent Helper: 2/5 (5 being helpful)

Price:Free