Review: Peek-a-Boo Baby lets your little one play a virtual version of the classic game

Peek-a-Boo Baby lets your little one play a virtual game of peek-a-boo. They can play the game with the provided avatars or even with one that you can customize with your own picture. You can record and share video of all the memories you are creating.

If you’d like to purchase Peek-a-Boo Baby ($2.99, iPad/iPhone), please use the handy link below so they’ll know who sent you.

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No ads, no in-app purchases, external links to social media

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When you open up the Peek-a-Boo Baby, your first task is to choose what avatar you wish to use to play your game of peek-a-boo. You can choose between the provided male or female avatar, or you can customize an avatar with a picture of your choosing. It can be a picture of Mom or Dad, or it could even be a picture of the family dog. Then you must choose the audio, again with the options of provided male or female voices or one that you record on your own.

Once you begin to play, you’ll find your avatar sitting on a sofa in a virtual living room with a pillow in front of his/her face. With one little tap, the pillow moves down and your child will see the smiling face of the avatar (or your face if you choose) and hear “peek-a-boo” (or your own custom greeting). As your child plays, you have the option of creating videos of their reactions, which you can then post to Facebook or other social media. The videos show in split-screen format with one side showing the actions of the avatar and the other showing your precious little one’s antics.

Your child can also explore the virtual living room and enjoy the interactive elements provided. Just by tapping they can do things like change the scenery in the picture frames or change the color of the throw pillows on the sofa. You also have the option to mute the background music and sound effects independently of each other, which is great for parents when the background music becomes tedious.

What I liked:

For those who do choose to share these kinds of thing on social media, it is cute that the videos show the avatar playing peek-a-boo alongside the video of the child’s reaction. Friends and family will be able to see exactly what their precious little one is giggling about.
I remember from when my kids were very little how very, very long a good game of peek-a-boo could entertain them. I think it would be interesting to see if a virtual version of the same game could have the same appeal. I may have to find a baby to play with today.

What I liked less:

I wasn’t crazy that, when customizing the avatar with your own picture, your chosen face was put into a preset hair design. I opted to have my avatar look like Reese Witherspoon (don’t judge me) and to me it just looks a little weird to have her face inserted in a straight, dark hairstyle. Perhaps if there were a few more options of hair and coloring to choose from (or even to have the face framed in a different way while using its own hair), it might be a little more realistic. Many games currently on the market that offer customizable characters have multiple options for hair, skin color, and ethnicity to create a more diverse game. It would be nice to see some changes in this direction.
I do have to say that for the price tag on this one, I would expect a bit more content or customizability. I understand that it is touted strictly as “the ONLY true peek-a-boo game for your iPad or iPhone” so it’s not that I’m expecting it to add in completely new functions, but it would be fun if you could change up the backgrounds some more or perhaps be able to record multiple versions of the audio of “peek-a-boo” so that there is some variation.

Overall I found Peek-a-Boo baby to be a good starting point for an app that offers the classic game of peek-a-boo in virtual form. The quality of the gameplay is very nice even if the content is somewhat limited. With some additions to the customization options and perhaps some variations in the available scenery, it has the potential to be a well-rounded app for its target market. As it stands now, I’m giving it a 3.5 star ranking.

*****