Patrick’s Dinosaur: Aliens and Diggers App Review
App Info
Price: $1.99
Overview
Patrick’s Dinosaur: Aliens and Diggers is an imaginative and creative app that was made for a young child by his family. It will certainly capture the hearts and minds of many young children-after all, how can you go wrong with dinosaurs chucking rocks, hearts and cheese at aliens? It also includes a creative sticker activity.
Features include:
- Completely child-safe
- Child-designed artwork and game play
- Contains dinosaurs, aliens, spaceships and construction equipment
- Shows numbers of hits to promote number recognition and counting
- Narrated by a young child
Quality
Patrick’s Dinosaur: Aliens and Diggers is a high quality app. The primary game play is a target activity where children will need to account for the “gravity” in each setting so they can launch the projectile to hit or land where they want it to. Tap the dinosaur on the front page to get it started. The app also includes a sticker scene where children can create scenes and save them to the camera roll. Recordings of a child’s voice directs young users with simple, clear directions. Tap the spaceship to get to the sticker activity. There is a simple, yet complete protected parents’ area that will answer any questions or minor technical questions, as well.
Education
This app isn’t really intended to be “educational,” as such, but children will nonetheless learn a lot while using it. Each of the activity scenes has its own rules about gravity that children will need to figure out and account for as they toss the items at the targets. The young narrator explains that gravity accounts for the differences-none out in space, a little bit near the moon, and a lot here on earth. The app’s physics engine causes the projectiles to behave differently in each scene, and children will need to experiment to find out how high and far to toss in order to achieve the desired effect. Each time a player scores a hit, the app displays a number showing how many hits have been accomplished, from one to eleven.
The app also includes a sticker scene that can be scrolled to various areas in the “world.” It’s ideal for encouraging language and story-telling, so be sure to chat with your child as he or she gets creative with this section. Save the pictures if you wish by using the device’s camera roll.
Entertainment
It’s very tough to go wrong with an app for young children that combines dinosaurs, aliens and spaceships, construction equipment, and an excuse to throw things! The artwork, animations, and sound effects are quite engaging. Most young children will find lots to love about this app. It’s easy to use and will be highly entertaining. The use of a child’s artwork is also ingenious; it will encourage creativity in many ways and may even make your child a bit jealous that someone else’s family could create a real app from a kid’s vision. Be prepared for your youngster to dream big, as well.
Value
Patrick’s Dinosaur: Aliens and Diggers costs ninety-nine cents on the App Store. If your youngster has the slightest interest in dinosaurs, aliens, spaceships, or throwing things, it will be well worth the money. The app is entertaining, educational, and encouraging.
Child Friendliness
- Protected parent area (contains external links & rating)
- NO social media
- NO 3rd party ads
- NO in-app purchase
