Review: James' Amazing Adventure takes your child on a quest at the beach!

Join young James on an adventure to the beach. Your child can help James make friends with the sea creatures as he helps them find their lost items to bring their orchestra back together. This app is targeted at kids of preschool age.

If you'd like to purchase James' Amazing Adventure ($2.99), please use the handy links below.

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There are no ads or in-app purchases. External links are in protected parent section.

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Watch the fabulous Ellie bring this app to life here:

We start our day with young James headed out for an adventure at the beach. To help learn the mechanics of the game we have to help clear the clouds from the sky and set up a beach umbrella for James. Shortly after, James finds an octopus with a story to tell. This octopus is part of an underwater band that has been upended and scattered to all corners by a sneezy whale. James must complete multiple games to help find all of the items.

These games require little ones to use their fine motor skills to do things like navigate a boat through a rocky maze. Kids also get to practice things like mixing colors or matching sounds as they complete games to get instruments back. They have to match baby birds to their parents just by the sounds they make, and they get to take an ocean dive to help retrieve the lost piano by sorting fish by their colors and patterns. All of these games and more help put the scattered orchestra back together.

This app has parental controls that allow users to choose from four different skill levels. Parents can also set time limits for play. The entire app appears to be non-verbal with instructions being strictly in visual gestures. Because the app is designed for preschool aged children I can understand the lack of text, but there were occasions when I felt like a verbal cue would have helped me out. There are entertaining cartoons between each game that help move the story along.

I will note that for review purposes I was using a TestFlight version of this app. I did run into a couple of minor tech glitches, most notably there were occasions where there would be no sound when I started a particular game. I ran into the same issue on multiple devices, randomly. This was really only an issue on the game where you match the baby birds to their parents by the sound they make, but I found that it was generally remedied by exiting the app and re-entering it. Historically I have found that when I have issues with an app in TestFlight, particularly technical issues, the problem is often caught and corrected by the developer before it hits the App Store.

What I liked:

This app addresses a great variety of skills that preschoolers should be mastering, with ten individual games.
I liked the parental control options. Being able to choose skill level was nice, but being able to set time limits was even better.
I found the artwork charming.

What I liked less:

As I stated above, there were occasions when I felt like a bit of a verbal cue might help. In the logic game (with the crocodile) there were times that it was perfectly clear what he wanted (like matching his item exactly). Other times it was unclear - did he want you to choose one with the same pattern of striped poles, or the same number, or the same size sequence, etc. Just a little prompting would have helped.
I did not seem to have the option to go back and repeat a game without working my way through all of the games. I'd like to see a way to choose which activity you wanted to work on, with a chart that shows which ones have been completed.
I did find the technical issues frustrating, but, as I said, it is possible that these were only an issue with the TestFlight version that was provided to me.

Overall I found this app to be an enjoyable way to expose your preschooler to a variety of skills that will help them build a foundation for learning. With a few modifications, I think it has the potential to be top notch. As it stands now, I give it a strong 4 stars.

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