Review: Eric & Bruce BBQ Party is open-ended playtime cooking for guests.

 

 

Bottom Line: Eric and his puppy, Bruce are doing some creative meal planning and cooking for their BBQ and children help with everything from choosing the food, cooking it and serving the wild concoctions to guests who may not approve of the choices. We've seen this kind of app from other developers, but Eric & Bruce Technology does a good job carving a space for itself in the genre.

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iPhone/iPad ($2.99)

 

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This app has no ads, no in-app purchases and parent-protected links to external sites of iTunes and developer website.

 

 

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Eric and his puppy friend, Bruce are having a BBQ party and inviting four people to sit at their festive table to try the creations they make with help from child users. The app opens with the play button prominently featured in the middle of the screen. There are three other choices on the opening screen of rating the app, other apps by the developer and a parent section. The parent section requires a birth year entry and this area allows switching on or off sound and music as well as a scrolling credit for the app and links to the website and social media addresses. The more apps section doesn't require a birth year for entry but to access the apps featured in this section, a birth year is required to access the Apple app store. All birth year entries require users to be 13 years or older. The last section on this screen is the rate us button for venturing to the app store and leaving a review. This section also requires a birth year.

 

Once play begins, children are shown a table with four chairs situated on a lovely lawn with balloons and sitting under a tree.  Children get to choose from a whopping 12 people or animals to place in the seats. The characters are diverse and adorably illustrated with a sense of humor. There is a sheep and a cat for animal lovers, typical little boy and girl, then things are a bit more creative with a farmer, guard, child wearing a reindeer costume, the queen of England, a Sherlock-looking character and even a man in a suit that looks eerily similar to President Obama. Points for creativity to the developer.

 

After guests have been seated, users, Eric and Bruce go to the fridge and select five foods from 27 choices. Meats, vegetables and fruits are represented including steak, bacon, kiwi and corn. . Next comes food preparation. Since this is open-ended play, there are some limitations, but children are for the most part, left to their own devices on what they will mix together or prepare alone. Users can make a smoother, boil a soup, mix a salad, make a sandwich, slice and dice on the cutting board or cook on the grill. I made a lovely brown soup with tomato, turkey, orange, strawberry and cucumber. The app garnished it with bits of my ingredients for an attractive presentation. After playing with the preparation, it's time to serve the honored guests. Setting the food in front of guests is all that's needed for them to sample the delicacies. Some will adore the creations showing hearts and stars and other will make noises to show their displeasure. The cat and the farmer didn't love my soup, but Sherlock and chef thought it was yummy. There's no accounting for taste. After all five plates have been served to the four guests, the app lets kids keep the same guests or boot some out for new folks.

 

The app performed well technically with no bugs found while I was exploring and tinkering. The characters are cute to look at and the animations are humorous and attractive. I mentioned in the bottom line above that we have seen apps like this before and two big names come to mind, Toca Kitchen and Dr. Panda's Restaurant. Toca Kitchen is free and Dr. Panda is $2.99. How does Eric and Bruce compare? Pretty well. It's unusual to have another developer delve into a well-established section of the app store like where Toca Boca and Dr. Panda sit, but this app sits there like it belongs. The app has enough differences from setting, characters and number of choices to a bulky number of kitchen fun that can be utilized. Whether it's better or worse is up to users, but I don't think anyone looking for a fun cooking app for the youngest iOS users will be disappointed with this purchase.

 

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Cynthia has three kiddos that will be coming home early tomorrow because of snow on the beginning of a three day weekend. She may have shed a tear. *Smart Apps for Kids was paid a priority review fee for this post.