James' amazing adventures: learning games for kids

The functioning of the app is extremely straightforward with intuitive help guides to lead the user gently into the narrative of the story and begin the quest. The layout is awash with bright colours, movement and engaging background music all designed carefully to draw the child into the game and get into the flow without any interruption.

During the early stages of the quest the child is helped, if needed, buy the pink octopus, to ensure they have a clear understanding of the game logic and to prevent them from becoming too frustrated and giving up, this help system is intelligent and therefore not overbearing and gently assists the user. At the ‘easy’ level and after a set number of errors the application will restrict the number of options a child can choose and also display part of the answer. The next level up the options are restricted but the answer is not revealed. The assistance infrastructure sets the pace of the game and is individualised to the responses of the child, so if the child completes a task without any errors the next task presented will be at a higher level. At the highest level the child is offered no assistance at all but after a number of mistakes the application will re gear to a simpler level. The parent also has the facility to set the general level of the quest and a time limit. They are also presented with a dashboard that tracks the progress of their child and displays the data relating to motor skills, logic, memory, listening and reflexes which are picked up throughout all 10 of James’ educational games.

The developers have taken great care to develop an educationally based app that has a game element. This has been tried by many developers to varying degrees of success, many developers have concentrated more on the game element to the detriment of the educational purpose, many educationalists have done the opposite! However, this group of developers have achieved this fine balance exceedingly well and have spend, what appears to be, a long time collating views from a panel of experts to help them develop a fine example of proper edutainment. The core value of the developer as expressed on their web site “because with young children, play and learning are (and always should be) inseparable” holds true with this application.

The attention to detail of the educational aspect, the quality of the original graphics and the delightful musical compositions conjures together an impressive package that is a must for any parent seriously interested in providing their child with an engaging and educational journey giving them a head start in the very important area of pre-school cognitive development.

This is one of the best applications I have reviewed and it will certainly be put on my electronic bookshelf for when my grandchildren come to visit. I look forward to this organisation developing more pre-school applications to add to the library.

You can download James' amazing adventures: learning games for kids on your iOS or Android devices from the app stores. Download the James' amazing adventures: learning games for kids app from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.