So recognizing that the age of entry for video games is lower now than it's ever been before, UFO Interactive has decided to publish the Smart Kids series — games aimed at kids who are very young, starting at the age of three. The latter is what we'll focus on here, and its collection of accessible, cute, and very, very simple mini-games.
There are twelve of them, altogether, and the first positive point to address is that each of these games looks great. Visually, the simple cartoon style that is applied to each design is very accessible, and completely inoffensive — on the same level as what you'd see in a children's book meant for the same young age range.
The elements that players interact with, too, are always clear and usually very large, making them easy to see. The piano playing mini-game is most encouraging for that, as it transforms the touch screen into a small subset of a keyboard and lets players create their own music. You can save your creations and play them back, and change the sound to mimic the tones of an organ instead, or even the barks of a dog. The dog option isn't quite as abrasive as the cat screeches found in the same mode in Smart Girl's Playhouse, which is a minor positive for the Boy's edition.
But both versions do share the one other occasion when the design emits some less-than-satisfying sounds. In the Match Sounds game, players are asked to remember the correct order in which five cartoon vehicles blow their horns or rev their engines, and then repeat that sequence. Just like the classic game Simon. Except, in between touching the vehicles in the order you're trying to remember, a congratulatory bell will ring every time you get one right.
That could, potentially, break up the flow of a child's memory — having to wait after every correct input for a few seconds before you're allowed to touch the next right car or boat in sequence. Luckily, that occurrence is isolated, and the remaining games in the Gameroom package play out with few, if any, additional concerns.
There's a card-matching memory game. There's a counting game, and simple jigsaw puzzler with only five or so pieces per puzzle. There's a design that lets you play instruments along with four different background songs, a Whac-a-Mole clone that's called Exterminate Monsters while it plays a rousing rendition of Flight of the Valkyries as the background music , and more.
Each of these designs is very straightforward and easy to play — though they might lack depth for some of the boys who'd try them, and they could get bored after a while. The deeper designs are the piano mode, mentioned earlier, and probably also the Drawing and Coloring mini-games. Drawing offers a blank canvas to scribble across, with a small set of different colors and stamps to use in creating your masterpiece. Coloring offers the same array of shades, but provides the picture for you — touching an empty region will instantly fill it completely with color, so no scribbling to fill it in yourself.
Both modes will also save your creations while you play other games, so you can revisit them later — but they will be lost if you turn off the power to the system. Finally, while Smart Boy's Gameroom is almost identical to Smart Girl's Playhouse in all of the game designs mentioned above, there are a couple of gender-specific designs included here that do differentiate the products.
The Girl's version had a Dress Up mode for putting together outfits and clothing styles, and a Lunch Box mode that let little women put together virtual lunches with a variety of different Japanese foods.
The Train Station design gives little guys a virtual train set to play with, as an interconnected set of tracks is presented on the touch screen while a zoomed-in view focuses on the train chugging along the line up above. You can touch several switchtrack points on the rails to alter the direction they point, and the train will change course when it comes to those intersections. You can also alter the speed of the engine from fast, to slow, to a full stop, as well as selecting from three different styles of train model — there's a bullet train, a more traditional passenger train, and an old steam engine that looks like it came straight out of the Old West.
Car Driving mode also offers three different vehicles — a police cruiser, a taxi and a kindergarten bus. It gives players a set of large arrows on the touch screen and asks them to drive around a small town to reach a destination.
The police car needs to get to the station, the bus needs to get to the school. Simple and easy stuff. But also much more interesting than the Smart Girl's Playhouse Lunch Box game, which it replaces in this version.
Because the lack of an American menu in that girl's design was a bit of a negative against the Playhouse edition, Gameroom is likely a slightly more appealing product overall. Game highlights: 1. Each game level is divided into three levels, the first level is the easiest, the second level is more difficult, the third level is the most difficult. The third level of each task is a test of the player, make sure you will not smash your mouse or keyboard.
Players will face numerous failures, please be mentally prepared. Play introduction: 1. After entering each game level will be prompted, these tips will tell the player what to do. The scene of the game buttons will sometimes change, please be sure to read the tips.
See all. View all. Click here to see them. Customer reviews. Overall Reviews:. Recent Reviews:. Review Type. All 9 Positive 3 Negative 6. All 9 Steam Purchasers 6 Other 3. All Languages 9 Your Languages 3 Customize. Date Range. To view reviews within a date range, please click and drag a selection on a graph above or click on a specific bar. Show graph. Brought to you by Steam Labs. Filter reviews by the user's playtime when the review was written:. No minimum to No maximum. Off-topic Review Activity.
When enabled, off-topic review activity will be filtered out. This defaults to your Review Score Setting. Read more about it in the blog post. Excluding Off-topic Review Activity. Loading reviews There are no more reviews that match the filters set above. Review Filters. Enter up to characters to add a description to your widget:. Create widget.
Popular user-defined tags for this product:?
0コメント