Kids piano - interesting music app!

I've bought, installed,played with and let my daughter play with "Kids piano" by developer "Sunny day". There is a trial as well. Full app is here.

This is a truly great start for an app with many facets. However, in order to be used more by toddlers, some things need to be done and there is a lack of polish on some features.

* Plus: Great ideas! Truly great ideas in this app! There is a  note/tone memory game, coupled to color and shape. Really great pedagogical idea.  There are different input imageries, and so on.
* Plus: There are also three "voices" - piano and both womans and childrens voices for vocalizing. The childrens voice *immediately* grabbed my daughters attention. But then the sample problems appeared (see below).

* Problem: Many clicks to start a feature. My daughter cant remember it all, and quickly learned to avoid this app altogether. Solution: Shortcuts directly to different parts of the app, that we can put on the homescreen. Android can link to activities, that might be one option. Where should it start? Note memory game, piano player, etc

* Problems: Samples not good. "So" sample of voice 2( of 3, the children) has a clear silence/delay at start, that ruins use completely. Samples (even in this full version) are of *terribly* LOW quality.

* Problem: Songs list unusable for toddler rendering play-along feature unusable. Categorize songs and allow filtering by parent, add icons to songs so that small children (who don't read) can select songs themselves. This would improve usability enormously!

* Problem: Too many things is happening on some screens - really the thing is the note history, that I think one should be able to disable for toddlers, it is distracting.

This is a great effort but there remains work to get it to work for my daughter. It is a great start and I recommend having a look at the lite version to get a good idea.

"Animal matching for Kids" - memory game - recommended

This is one of the better memory games out there, "Animal matching for Kids" by developer Heyduda by zeec GmbH. (app on market) It is eclipsed by the king of memory games for android, "Kids match 'em", (trial / buy - my review of that is coming).

I like:
+ Nice images
+ Good positive feedback
+ Great configuration options (difficulty levels, work really good)

I dislike:
- Main screen! Skip it!! (see my post here)
- Matches stay on board, don't disappear.
At least make it configureable to make matches dissappear, like real/physical memory game.
- Animations (during match) are too extensive and child has to wait to continue. Distracting. Atleast let it be configureable to turn off.
- Incidentally, publisher/developer puts out a million memory games based on same app, just different themes. It clutters the market, I think - but that may be more of a limitiation of the android market than the publisher.

To all toddler game devs: Skip main screen!

This post is not a review but a quick note on a favorite gripe of mine:
Toddler apps that have a "main screen" with buttons to start game.
This is just confusing!

SKIP THE MAIN SCREEN. Go RIGHT TO THE GAME!


Why? Look at the situation:
My toddler daughter quickly learns to recognize the icons on the android tablet.
She learned to swipe to the homescreen page with "her" game icons, and selects an app/game/activity.

Then comes the main screen - this is TOTALLY unecessary: She will never go into the settings page, she will never configure the game.
I will.

So: Make the settings page accessible from within the game, use the context button. She never presses this, because she knows it just holds a "boring" screen with text she cannot read. If necessary, make it "double click" - like some devs do for the home screen button (good thing for even younger kids/babies/young toddlers who cannot maneuver the android home screen).

No more toddler app main screens, skip to the game already!

Best Android Shape Puzzle: Kids Preschool Shape Puzzle

I have reviewed most drag-n-drop shape puzzle games (one developer co. has one puzzle app per category of motifs, but their app is not at all as good as this one) - this is the best one, I think: Kids Preschool Shape Puzzle by Intellijoy. Full version and lite version exists(market).

My daughter took to this game quickly as a two year old.

I have also tried many of the other apps from this developer co, Intellijoy - and this is their best offering, I think - but we'll see as she grows older.

The good and great:

+ Good tactile feedback on movement

+ Audio feedback - click on fit,

++ "Easy fit option" for younger players, sucks the piece into place, from roughly the right position

Actually - I dont even see the point of turning this off, since the learning point is seeing where the piece fits, and moving it to the correct position. Fine movement is a challenge that distracts from the main learning point, does not add to it.

++ Many puzzle motifs of different kinds

++ Good lite/trial package!

We bought the full app to get many more puzzles.

I had the trial installed for a month or two, but then decided to buy it since she liked it so much. Probably took me another month to actually get around to buying it.

+ Great with good positive feedback sound after completion.

Whats bad?

- "Main screen" with buttons to start game.

This is a recurring issue with all games for toddlers, and thus a comment that goes for all developers of toddler games:

SKIP THE MAIN SCREEN. Go RIGHT TO THE GAME!

I configure - and will easily find context menu to do so - SHE wants to just start playing, according to my configuration/setup choices.

- Previous and next buttons could be larger or:

- Next button could become larger when the puzzle has been completed, or a new, large next button added, for instance.

- Positive feedback sound could be even more positive, I think.

- Does not hide menubar in android 3+ (tablets). Please add hiding the menu bar, as video players adapted to android 3+ do (check bsplayer, for instance). All toddler apps should do this. Perhaps not possible when user interacts with device continuously?

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.anahoret.android.shapes