I received an email for the opportunity to review an upcoming app from Auryn Inc, one that is narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis. Whoaaaa!! Ladies and gentlemen, I am thrilled to be given the chance to have a sneak preview of this app before its official release, hence without further delay, please read my review below...
* Title: Where Do Balloons Go?
* Price: $5.99
* Category: Books
* Released: July 11, 2012
* Version: 1.0.1
* Size: 170 MB
* Language: English
* Seller: Auryn, Inc
* Rated: 4+
* Requirements: Compatible with iPad.Requires iOS 4.3 or later.
Description from the product page:
"WHERE DO BALLOONS GO features a physics engine that simulates how balloons are blown up. Through an Animal Balloon Game, kids can blow onto the iPad to blow up balloons, twist and turn them to create their own balloon animals.
Other highly interactive and creative games and activities include:
* Learn and explore as you play with animated balloons by recording your funny helium balloon voice, matching balloons with their human pairs and more!
* Bring stories from your child’s fantasy world to life by creating characters, recording dialogues, enacting scenes and creating a full-fledged play at the “Balloon Theatre”.
* Send customized and hand-written postcards to your friends and family.
* Let your little one’s imagination flow into outer space by getting them to join the stars and create imaginary constellations.
* Engage your kids with some foot tapping music as they shake a leg at the “big balloon dance”.
* Listen to what each character in the story has to say to you by nudging them to talk."
What's good?
* This app is engaging and interactive, there are surprises everywhere in the book as you move along the pages!
* The illustration is so cute and beautiful! I love the details as well!
* It is kinda cool to have Jamie Lee Curtis narrating the story!
* I love the idea of writing our own postcard, from choosing the postcard template to writing and sending it off!
* I also enjoy the the dot to dot plane game as I'm trying to introduce this activity to my 3 years old boy in our learning lessons.
Room for Improvement?
* Jamie Lee Curtis’s voice is a bit boring at some pages. In the beginning, she sounds awesome but as we go through the pages, her voice gets into the same flat tone – you know children loves it when we talked in different pitches and tones? Similar to apps, I think having children narrating the app is a better option!
* There is a game where you need to touch all the balloons, I find that although it is fun, to be finding all the 200 balloons is a bit tiring even for me. I did managed to get down to 2 balloons left, but I do hope that the developer can reduce the number of balloons required and maybe change the balloons colors once we tap it? (Can consider putting all balloons in faded grey color, once we tap it, count reduced and balloon has colors on it?)
* There is a particular page shown below which I do not like (this is just my own opinion): I find it scary to see a boy inserting something into his ears and found myself immediately flipping over to the next page so that my boy does not learn to do that!
You can purchase the " Where Do Balloons Go? " app from the iTunes App Store.
I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the promo code by the sponsor to redeem the application for free from iTunes Store in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous iPad Apps reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My iPad App Reviews"
