Review : Wiggens Makes Friends At The San Diego Zoo for iPad
Wiggens is a fun and cuddly Chocolate Labrador puppy that shows kids what happens at the zoo, behind the scenes, when they’re more than just visiting. Letting kids experience things like feeding and playing with the zoo animals through interactions, reading, and questions is what “Wiggens Makes Friends At The San Diego Zoo” is all about. The app does a great job of keeping children interested in a single “page” by including not just interactions and sounds with animations, but also a fun story. The designers don’t try to dumb the story down to keep it simple for kids, instead loading each page with “cards” of text that are swiped to reveal the next one. I love this, as it lets kids stay interested in what’s going on instead of just flipping and swiping to get to the next thing.
The app is not just fun, but also educational. Children learn about zoo animals and what they eat, how they act, how to clean them, and tons more. There are amazing facts to discover, questions to discuss, and many exhibits to explore. Wiggens is not a simple once and done app for kids, but something they’ll keep coming back to again and again.
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(Here, kids move the scrub brushes to clean the rhino)
My kids loved this storybook. They have always been huge animal fans, as most kids are, and they took to this app and story right away. The story was easy enough for my 7 year old to read, but is also narrated for when my 5 year old sat down with it. There are enough interactions to make it more than “just a book”, but they are done tastefully and with enough class to keep it simple for kids. The games such as choosing what food to feed each animal, roaring like a lion (which monitors the level to determine if your loud enough), playing music, fact cards, and tons of bonus content are great additions and really added charm to an already excellent app. The graphics are decent, perhaps not the best I’ve ever seen, but they work for the story and are cute for kids, while the sounds and narration were done nicely and keep with the kid-friendly tone.
I highly recommend Wiggens Makes Friends At The San Diego Zoo, my kids (ages 5 and 7) love it, and as a parent I was comfortable enough with the content and navigation to let them roam alone. Well done.