Animal Train – First Word HD
(4 stars)
Price: $1.99
Developed by By CFC s.r.o. (22learn)
Animal Train is a fun educational game for pre-school age and up, and features a rambling cartoon train that traverses 7 areas and collects (with the help of your fingers) more than 40 different animals. Test your child’s memory, recognition and fine motor skills to capture the animals and drop them into the train. The difficulty increases when multiple animals need to be found, and each must be located and placed onto the moving train.
Replay Value:
Your child will want to play this game because of the fun illustrated locations around the cartoon world of Animal Train. There is also an opportunity to set context for your child about what animals live where and why. We loved the fact that the ocean characters have their own special train cars that resemble fish tanks on wheels — very clever!
Furthermore, the memory aspect of this game presents an interesting contrast to the flip cards we see in other games like Miss Spider’s Tea Party and Monkey Preschool Lunchbox. In Animal Train HD, the player must listen for up to 3 animal names, retain that list in their memory and then drag them onto the train before it leaves the screen. In testing, our 3 year old had difficulty when trying to remember the second or third animal in time to drop the animal in the train.
Opportunities for Improvement:
We have grown to really enjoy and appreciate the development quality of games from 22learn. However, we did not particularly care for the first screen of the app being an advertisement for other apps. This takes away from some children’s ability to start the game immediately.
Other than the large advertisement at the start of the app, we really enjoyed the variety of animals and locations in Animal Train, and the cleverness with which the app presents an educational challenge. It’s not just the same kinds of mini-games with different graphics, it really is a new kind of game (compared to the other apps we’ve seen).
Rating (4 stars out of 4)
Note that at the time of this review, Animal Train HD is iPad-only, and we feel the price point of $1.99 is more than fair value for the quality of the game and the learning value. The graphics, narration and music are all top notch just like our experience with other apps by this developer. If your child loves animals and trains like ours does, you may want to go for it and purchase this excellent app!
