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Magic School Bus: Dinosaurs
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Graphics & Sound:
Magic School Bus: Dinosaurs for iPad is really a book masquerading as a game. There's a game inside the book, but more on that later. What stood out to us, as parents with more than a few Magic School Bus books on our kids' shelves, was the attention to detail in this app. As readers know, every page of a MSB book is jammed with content. Kids talking sidebar conversations, Ms. Frizzle telling the class lots of neato facts about wherever (or when-ever) they happen to be attending class that day, and an assortment of labels or papers make for lots of reading material. Magic School Bus: Dinosaurs for iPad takes this to its logical conclusion, providing 90% of its screen real estate for illustrations and written dialogue, that will play in each character's voice when touched. Book reports are scattered throughout, and can be tapped to expand and read. There are some sound effects, but the focus is really on making this feel like a typical MSB story brought to life. Rather than rely on animation, Dinosaurs for iPad is really about voice acting and great illustrations we know and love from reading the books. When you get to play the game content embedded in this digital book, it's really just icing on the cake. And if your child is more attracted to the games, rest assured he'll be drawn into interacting with the entire story, which then stimulates reading.
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Gameplay:
The storyline behind Magic School Bus: Dinosaurs for iPad involves a typical school showcase, where the kids in Ms. Frizzle's class are going to show off their research on dinosaurs for parents and extended family. As things are coming together, The Frizz decides to take her class on a field trip. They end up visiting a real dino dig, where an old friend of Ms. Frizzle is leading the hunt for some Maiasaura bones. Magic School Bus: Dinosaurs ends up being a trip back through time, where the kids get a first-hand look at the various time periods leading up to, and following, the age of the giant lizard. The interaction comes in with those book reports we mentioned earlier, but there are also opportunities to go on a "dig" for dinosaurs you encounter during the story. This game involves handling a hammer and a brush to collect fossils, then piecing those back together on a skeleton. Doing this successfully earns you a dinosaur card, with neat facts about the animals you encounter during this magical journey. When it's all over, you can play a simple Match-3 game, where you race to match dinos and travel across the entire world in search of fossils.
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Difficulty:
The reading part is only a challenge for younger kids, but the narration of the story makes Magic School Bus: Dinosaurs for iPad accessible for all ages. Every object with writing that you see in an illustration can be touched to prompt narration, or the narration will start automatically once you turn the page. Not all the content on a page is read aloud by the app, so older kids will enjoy hunting down all the spoken content. The dino-dig game we mentioned is very easy, so that even young kids will be able to participate. Some of the matching, when you try to put bones in the right place on a skeleton, will elude very young kids who don't yet have all their coordination down, but that's where mom and dad or an older sibling can help. The Match-3 game ends up being pretty challenging, so don't expect your little, little ones to grasp this quite yet. For older kids or even the parents, this little matching game ends up being one of the highlights in the app.
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Game Mechanics:
The implementation of touch and swipe is done well here, but there's no pinch-to-zoom implemented. It would have been fun to extend the game aspects of this app to include some hidden-object stuff, especially if it meant going further into the wonderful illustrations. The use of swipe and tap mechanics during the fossil digging game was spot-on. Simple and intuitive, it really just felt right. The best thing is that even after you collect all the dinosaur cards, you can still go back through and do more fossil digs. Strangely enough, the Match-3 that would appear to be the most "gamey" aspect here fell a little flat with our kiddie testers, in comparison to digging for fossils. Goes to show, it's hard to say which content will go viral... The end product is a great digital book, or bookified game, depending on your perspective. We're just happy to have Magic School Bus: Dinosaurs for iPad, since mobile and touch-screens are increasingly what our kids enjoy. When a device like the iPad can encourage kids to read and enjoy books, we consider that a win for parents AND companies like Scholastic that are trying to reinvent themselves. Recommended.
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-Fridtjof, GameVortex Communications AKA Matt Paddock |
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