Bottom Line: An app for kids to build their own animal pets with different body shapes, parts and accessories. It’s perfect for open-ended creativity with an endless way to decorate and accessorize, and there are good child protections built into the app. Monki Animal Builder is a great choice for creative fun!
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External links to the app store and to the Monkimun webpage; links are protected with a specified swipe.
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Monki Animal Builder is a brand new release from Monkimun SL, made for kids 4 and older. The app has a simple and fun concept with a pretty smooth interface and great graphics. The user starts by hatching one of six eggs to choose a body type. If the first type wasn’t the desired choice, all of the eggs can be hatched until the favored shape is found. Each body type has a different personality, too, evident from the first egg crack.
After selecting a body, the user decorates the animal with six colors and stamps and various animated body parts and accessories. All parts are added one at a time, so there’s a lot of room for creativity. The combinations can be crazy or cute — it’s up to the user. There are eyes, noses, mouths, horns, ears, arms, legs and ears, with more than 30 different parts in all. And the parts are all animated as soon as they are placed on the body. Hands wave and clap; wings flutter; eyes blink; and the mouths smile, laugh and make other sounds.
The animated accessories include glasses, hats, jewelry and bows. The garden hat flaps as if it is in a gentle breeze while the snorkel mask fills up as if it is under water. The variety is fun and it’s easy to make changes by flicking off pieces and adding new. The animal isn’t limited by standard convention, either — add one arm or six, or put eyes where the ears go. There is no limit to the creativity in this app. The pieces can also be resized and reoriented by pinching. Another nice feature is that the pieces automatically orient to the correct side of the animal body, making it nice for younger children who might not have the dexterity to pinch the pieces easily.
I’m glad I asked my ten-year-old to check out the app, because he discovered that each individual piece can be recolored. Add the desired pieces to the monster, then swipe back to the color selection. Tap the desired color and then tap the part to be changed. Tapping the colors themselves actually brings up multiple options, too. The body part can be colored in or drawn on with various patterns, and tapping the colors brings up choices of circle, star or heart stamps as well as three line thicknesses.
After completing the monster, snap a picture to save it in the album. Return to the home screen and visit all animals by tapping the photo album in the upper right corner. I like that the animals can be changed and edited — but take note that the changes do not save unless a new photograph is taken.
The animals can be deleted from the album page, but only by completing a specified swipe. There are a lot of these parent lock swipes in this app, each time requesting a slightly different swipe — swipe right with two fingers, swipe up with one. This helps keep the app safe for younger children. Though there are external links to the Monkimun website and to the app store for additional Monkimun apps, both are protected.
Another cool feature is the ability to see animals created by other users, but in a way that’s safe for young kids. After accessing the other animals with a protected swipe, the user can open and modify other animals. However, there is no actual interaction with other users.
I really had fun with this app, and I know my therapy kids will love using it as well. There were only a few things I felt were missing. Though the sound effects in the app were really cute, I still wanted an option to record. I would like to be able to have kids record a name for their animal, or even a brief description of it. I also wanted to be able to use the colors to write and draw in the blank space surrounding the animal. It would be fun to draw a house for the animal, or at least write his name.
In addition, to be more useful to me in therapy, I would like to be able to send the animals via email, in order to allow kids to print them and even write stories about them. It would be great for creative writing, making up stories about the animals, as well as practicing descriptive writing.
Overall, this app is definitely worth a download. At $2.99, it’s on the high end for apps like this, but the creative fun and safety of the app (and no in-app purchases!) make it worth the money.
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Heather H. liked that these monsters made her smile and forget a little bit about endless winter. SmartAppsForKids.com was paid a priority review fee to complete this review in an expedited manner.
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