Christmas Egg Surprise

Christmas Egg Surprise is designed to be a fun and engaging application that helps introduce young children to a new set of words through play. Downloading the application from the store is painless and the user is immediately asked whether they want to have notifications switched on, because extra eggs can be offered each day. The welcome screen is bright and cheerful with Santa on his sledge pulled by reindeer, flying back and forth across the snowy background scene. The top left of the screen provides a count of the number of eggs that are left to play with, if opting for the free version you will have twenty to unwrap. To the right top of the screen is the number of toys/objects that have been unwrapped. Just below, centre stage, is the title of the game, are three larger icons below representing an egg for unwrapping, a box for checking the objects collected and a shop for purchasing all 250 eggs in one go. The first of the three circular icons at the bottom right of the screen reveals two icons the first of which provides you with a countdown of how many hours and minutes are left before you can receive another five eggs for free; the other icon links out to an advert for another free app, which if you watch the advert will reward you with another free egg and download it will reward you with a further free egg. The middle of the three bottom icons provides a description of the game and how you can get more eggs. The last icon is a link to the settings where the user can switch the sound, music and notifications on or off together with links out to the privacy and credits pages.
At the very bottom of the screen is the inevitable set of rolling adverts that appear not to disappear even when you buy the app.
 
Playing the game is very straightforward, the child simply presses on the egg icon to reveal an enormous, colourfully wrapped egg centre screen. The child rubs across the egg to reveal the milk chocolate coating, when completed, tapping on the egg starts a simulated process of biting chunks out of the chocolate until it is all gone. When the chocolate is virtually eaten a smaller kinder like container is revealed and with a tap the object/toy is displayed. The letters spelling out the words for the object is also displayed and a delightful recording of a child speaking the name of the object is played. The spoken word can be muted to encourage the user to speak the name of the object instead. Once the child has revealed a number of objects they can review what they have collected by clicking on the box icon to reveal all the objects on a set of floating shelves, clicking on the object displays a larger size of the selected object with the object name and the girl speaking the object name.
 
Having tried the game myself and enlisting the help of two young children we managed to consume a fair number of eggs but eventually their enthusiasm waned, they just got tired of the repetitive nature of the process. On a number of occasions my little helpers clicked on the home button by accident perhaps this could be moved to the top of the screen, the music was quite addictive and I’m humming it as I write, but overall the application is not for the feint hearted. With a curious mixture of objects that did not relate to anything in particular the user is left somewhat bemused, perhaps a theme or even, dare I say start with the EYFS list of most frequently used words, ‘home’, ‘dog’ etc but ‘megaphone’, ‘bag full of money’ and ‘handcuffs’ had a strange burglary theme?