Space Cakes

Overview

Your child can bake and decorate an unlimited number of space alien cakes in this specially designed bakery. The app touts a number of educational benefits and includes Juddly integration and a commercial sponsorship by Eli’s Cheesecake.

Features include:

• Activities that could be used for educational purposes
• Parent/teacher Guide
• Juddly integration

Quality

Space Cakes provides all of the necessary design elements to make one feel as though they are in a special bakery used to bake and decorate cakes like no others in the galaxy.

The app’s interface is intuitive and users will find the app easy to use in most cases; however, the use of better polished graphics would increase the overall ease of use and enjoyment. App users have come to expect high quality graphics, something this app is lacking. Improved graphics will make using the app on smaller screen devices more enjoyable.

An in-app guide is included for parents and teachers. Information regarding common core state standards, how to move around the app, the sponsor, Juddly and the developer can be found here. This section is difficult to read on the smaller screen devices due to such a small font size.

Education

The Parent/Teacher Guide included provides adults with information about the associated common core state standards, how to use the app and more. It suggests that the app could be used for number sense, visual discrimination, memory for numbers and geometry for young kids and how to extend the educational benefits.

Non-traditional ingredients are used for the recipes and the recipes change each time so users will need to pay close attention to the appearance and quantity of the ingredient as they search through the cupboards, refrigerator and freezer.

Entertainment

Kids will be required to gather the necessary alien ingredients for the recipe. After all of the correct ingredients have been gathered, it is on to mixing and baking, including the selection of 3D cake form to be used. Our favorite part of the process was decorating the cake using the large number of frosting, sprinkles and toppers options. Cakes rotate and levitate making it possible to decorate the ENTIRE cake. An unlimited amount of unique creations can be made with the current cake forms and decorations; however, additional cake forms would do a lot to extend the entertainment value.

While delivering the cakes to Earth the user steers the spaceship picking up additional cake toppers along the way.

Another favorite feature was the celebration upon completion of the cake. We had so much fun setting off fireworks, confetti and noise makers. Yes, I am one of those people that love setting off all of the noisy toys at the store.

Completed creations can be saved to the gallery and shared using the Juddly interface. Creations can also be saved to your device photos. You are not required to use Juddly.

Value

Space Cakes is a free, but sponsored, universal app that is entertaining and educational. It includes a good amount of content. Your family will have fun making unique cakes to share with Earthlings.

Child Friendliness

External links are included in the Parents/Teachers Guide, while unprotected most users shouldn’t be drawn to this section. The Juddly icon, also unprotected, is more likely to draw children’s attention. This menu does include a Facebook button. Ideally, the Juddly icon would be protected as it is meant for parents and not children.

Space Cakes is free due to a commercial sponsorship. While this is done unobtrusively in this app, I hope we do not see more of this in apps intended for kids. Kids are exposed to enough through commercials on TV, etc. I would much rather pay for a quality app than have children exposed to sponsorships or ads in apps.