Bottom Line: Although Exploring Careers presents ten career opportunities — such as artist, doctor, firefighter and chef — in a gender-equal manner, it falls dreadfully short in presenting good grammar, and the hands-on activities are hit-and-miss. With some tweaking by the developer and some kid-testing, updates can make this app a better value.
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Exploring Careers by Adeel Javed gives kids a basic definition and a little hands-on game time for ten different careers. Choices include artist, astronaut, builder, chef, doctor, firefighter, computer programmer, musician, pilot and "sports." Each career opens to an illustration that gives a simple explanation, which is narrated by a child. Users then have the option to return to the main screen or play a mini game associated with each career. The illustrations are reminiscent of anime, with big eyes and colorful environments. The child narration is clear and easy to understand. The best part of this app is the complete lack of gender stereotyping. All profession names are inclusive, such as "firefighter" rather than "fireman," and each illustration includes both male and female characters equally without presenting one or the other in secondary roles. For example, the firefighters are both fighting fires, and both pilots are wearing pants next to a plane. There's no assumptions that women will be flight attendants instead.
The mini games included are a bit hit-and-miss concerning fun, ease of play, and level of difficulty. In the artist mini game, users can choose from a basic set of colors or from a spectrum of colors to paint on an easel. However, there are no brush size adjustments or eraser tool. Having a choice of hundreds of colors seems a bit excessive if a child can't erase a stray line or save an image without taking a screen shot. Two of the mini games in particular stand out because controlling the game play was so difficult. In the sports mini game, users can throw a basketball into a hoop and keep score. I had trouble getting the ball to recognize when I was touching it, and throws seemed wild. My ball got stuck a couple of times next to the basket in what seemed to be a glitch, but that did help me score more points. Putting a fire out in the firefighter mini game was also a little glitchy. In order to put fires out on the left side of the screen I had to push the hose off-screen and direct the water by holding the water.
The computer programmer mini game is whack-a-mole. Any game of whack-a-mole can be quick and fun, but these little dudes are lightning quick and frustrated not only my six-year-old son, but me as well. Since the games are the main draw of this app, they need some more testing by kids in the appropriate age group so the developer can get a better feel for what kids are capable of accomplishing, versus what will make them close the app and never come back.
The writing of the career definitions could do with some work also. "Builders are responsible for building houses, schools, offices, bridges, tunnels, and so on!" "And so on!" is too broad for young users, and each definition gets only one sentence. I would recommend that the developer spend more time crafting a clear and concise explanation of each career in order to give more weight to this aspect of the app.
Under the heading of questionable grammar, another career definition is, "A Chef manages a kitchen in a restaurant; they make delicious food for people to enjoy!" How about "A chef manages a kitchen in a restaurant and makes delicious food for people to enjoy." One last example of where the words matter is in the doctor mini game explanation: "Drag all the weird stuff from the patients tummy and drop them in the bucket to make him feel better." Besides the subject/verb agreement that makes me cringe, the big problem is that when users open the game, they are removing objects from the tummy, chest, leg and foot, not just the tummy as indicated in the sentence.
Aside from gaming glitches and the grammar faux pas listed above, there were no crashes while playing and all buttons led to where they promised. One issue, though, is that on the main screen, there is a speaker button to turn off the sound. It shuts off the background music, but it also turns off the narration, so there can't be one without the other. I also noticed that once the sound was clicked off, when I returned to the main screen the sound was still off, but the line across the button indicating "off" was removed. It makes for a confusing trip back and forth to see if the sound is actually off or on.
The app has lots of potential if some more time is given to tweaking language errors and cleaning up the mini games to be more suitable to little fingers.
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Cynthia spends her free time dancing for the rest of the Smart Apps for Kids staff. SmartAppsForKids.com was paid a priority review fee to complete this review in an expedited manner.
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