Bottom Line: Find Marlee and the Diamond Earring is a traditional seek-and-find game following a dog named Marlee and her many friends all around beaches in the Caribbean. Completing all of the games at every difficulty level will result in the player being rewarded with an eBook that tells the whole story of Marlee and the lost diamond earring.
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We begin our game with Marlee the dog on a sunny beach in the Caribbean. The beach is full of cabanas and folks playing volleyball. But where is Marlee? That’s the challenge. Marlee could be peeking out from behind a cabana or frolicking in the sun. The trick is to find her and click on her. Once you do that, she moves to a new position and you repeat the process. Each time you find Marlee, you earn one “dog” (instead of a star). After ten “dogs” are won, the level is complete.
After Marlee, we visit Oreo on a lovely beach with a cliff. Then it’s on to find Bella hiding behind the cabanas at sunset. By the time we visit Princess Dezzi, the rain has set in but there are still loads of folks on the beach and plenty of places to hide. Our final character is LouLou the gull, and she has found the lost earring. Once we finish LouLou’s level, we can return the lost earring to its owner.
There are three levels of difficulty, and the characters repeat in each level. As the difficulty increases, the beaches become more crowded and the hidden dogs become smaller and less obvious. While there is no time limit, there is a clock timing your progress. The faster you complete each level, the higher your final score will be.
Once the final level is complete, the eBook Marlee & the Diamond Earring becomes available for viewing.
What I liked:
- If you are a fan of seek-and-find games, much in the spirit of Where’s Waldo, this app offers a lot of opportunity to practice that skill. There does not appear to be a pattern, so each game is a new seek-and-find, though it does lack some variety in that the same scene is repeated for each character in each difficulty level.
- I like that there is a goal to work towards. In this case the reward is an eBook, but I would also have liked to see some kind of activity like a puzzle or coloring game.
What I might change:
- If you are a fan of seek-and-find then this app is for you, but if that isn’t your cup of tea then
you might find this app a little monotonous. Five characters at three difficulty levels each equals 15 of the same type of seek-and-find pages. I would really have liked to have seen some different types of activities for some of the characters, perhaps a maze for one or a puzzle for another, to keep things from becoming boring.
- I’d love to see more variation in the games with something in addition to the eBook as a reward. The characters are cute (who doesn’t love a pink dog in a tiara?), and I think that coloring pages of each dog would be very appealing. The book is fine, but I found that after one read-through my kids were ready to move on. I’m afraid it won’t be a book we revisit numerous times.
Find Marlee and the Diamond Earring is a nice app as far as the seek-and-find functions go. I’m afraid that it might have limited appeal, though, to those who aren’t seek-and-find aficionados. I liked it, but I think the lack of variety of activities and repetition of scenery keeps this app in the 3.5 star range.
*****
Kelli would love to be on a sunny, Caribbean beach right about now. SmartAppsForKids.com was paid a priority review fee to complete this review in an expedited manner.
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