Patchmania KIDS App Review
App Info
Price: $3.99
Overview
Calvin the Bunny and his furry friends are minding their own business when Farmer Lester destroys their forest home to create his farm fields. The little animals eat their way through the farmer’s crops by munching mazes of carrots, lettuce, mushrooms and more. Each puzzle presents a maze for players to solve to move the animals to their burrows by eating the vegetables in their proper order.
Features include:
- 625 puzzles
- 4 animal characters and 1 farmer character
- Engaging original story
- 9 unique game environments
- Intuitive controls
Quality
Patchmania Kids is a high-quality app that is easy to use and enjoyable to play. The controls are intuitive, and developers included a tutorial that explains the game, but it does require minimal reading skills. If a young child is playing, a parent or mentor may need to explain the game. The game is devised to utilize iCloud to sync between devices if desired.
Education
Patchmania Kids will exercise visual, spatial and logic skills as players attempt to solve each maze to help the animals eat the vegetables. Each screen presents a vegetable garden with rows of vegetables. The characters must only eat certain types of foods each, and can only move through the garden by eating something on every hop. This leads to gardens (mazes) that have several types of food in rows that cross over one another, and players must figure out which character to move first to get an unbroken line of food leading to the burrow.
Children will quickly figure out the simple beginning mazes, but with over 600 puzzles available, the tasks become quite complex. They require reasoning, visualization, and prediction skills to figure out how to find the best paths.
Entertainment
This app will keep maze fans entertained for hours. The kids’ version comes with several levels of puzzles immediately available, and completing puzzles correctly earns points that can be used for unlocking more puzzles (a total of 625 of them). The developers also have embedded a hints system that will help minimize frustration when a puzzle is a bit too tough. The points earned by puzzle completion and several other activities, such as finding one of the farmer’s coins, can also be used to purchase hints.
With each level, the story line and the play becomes more complex and entertaining, as well. Extra characters appear in the same garden patch, needing different kinds of foods, the animals start to use tunnels, and much more. With hints being rationed based on points, it will be important to keep an eye on children’s frustration level.
Value
Patchmania Kids costs $3.99 on the App Store. There are 75 puzzles open when the app is initially downloaded, then extra puzzles and hints are available either for in exchange for points earned for playing lower levels. The app is a good value because it has a lot of play value.
Child Friendliness
Patchmania Kids is child friendly. The app does connect automatically with the Game Center, and has a ratings system available in the game progress section.
- Parent area (contains connection to Game Center and ratings system)
- NO outside advertising
- NO in-app purchase
- YES Game Center connection
