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The Witch With No Name (iPad) Review

 
The Witch With No Name (iPad) Review
The Witch With No Name (iPad) Review
The Witch With No Name (iPad) Review

 
At a Glance...
 

Genre: , , , ,
 
Year:
 
Publisher:
 
Developer:
 
Final Score
8.0
8/ 10


User Rating
1 total rating

 

We liked?


  • Great use of a tablet for an interactive storybook
  • Simple, short puzzles
  • Creative story & interactive capabilities
  • Patience is a virtue; you never feel rushed

Not so much?


  • A little lip-syncing issues but it's still charming


Final Fiendish Findings?

Children’s books are a dime a dozen but children’s interactive eBooks for your mobile device are few and far between. The Witch with No Name is an artful blend of story and game. It’s fun to play, it’s fun to watch little ones play and is the best integration of all the features of your iPad into one interactive eBook I’ve seen yet.

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Posted October 30, 2012 by

 
Full Fiendish Findings...
 
 

Children’s books are a dime a dozen but children’s interactive eBooks for your mobile device are few and far between. The Witch with No Name by SlimCricket for the iPad is a an artful blend of story and game.

Our witchy tale begins with a very grumpy witch. She’s grumpy because she’s being teased for not having a name. She has no idea why she doesn’t have a name – she just can’t remember. What could have happened? Because she has no name, she is teased and therefore she’s grumpy and ultimately can’t make any friends – it’s a horrid cycle. Her only friend and housemate, Batina, announces the arrival of the U-See-All Crystal ball, which tells her how to make the proper potion to help reveal her name. Through a series of puzzles and adventures through cute animation, our grumpy witch’s name is finally revealed.

The adventure starts by choosing your language (English or French), your difficulty level (easy, medium or hard) and if you want to have the story read to you or you’re ready to read it yourself.

The Witch With No Name (iPad) Review

A walk home for the witch is full of neighbors calling out to her and teasing – she gets their revenge on them.

The Witch With No Name (iPad) Review

The Witch With No Name (iPad) Review

Upon her return her U-See-All Crystal ball has arrived!

The Witch With No Name (iPad) Review

The witch’s immaturity is balanced out by Batina, who helps keep her focused along the way. Through her excitement with the arrival of the package, the witch had torn the instructions to the crystal ball to pieces – but you can help.

The Witch With No Name (iPad) Review

A list of ingredients for the potion is made and the adventure starts. Your adventure begins with a trip to Peepo’s tree trunk house followed by the valley of the giants. You get lost along the way to the glittering grotto but it’s a good thing you have a compass to help –

The Witch With No Name (iPad) Review

Once inside the glittering grotto you have to collect only the yellow fireflies – which didn’t challenge my color-blind family in the least. “It may slow me down a bit,” one of them said.

The last ingredient needed involves a little immature behavior but it elicited many giggles from my testers.

The Witch With No Name (iPad) Review

This was the only game that caused me to pause. It requires the player to use more hand-eye coordination than I’ve seen in other games – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It involves matching the moving targets on the music bar with pressing the bellies of either the witch or Batina in time to the music. I have this thing – some weird ultra-perfectionistic gene – and just couldn’t let a symbol go by. I pretty much shoved my testers out of the way to make sure it was done properly. But there was enough of a song and attempts that, should you allow your little players a proper chance, they’ll meet their quota.

Then it was time to make the potion – making sure everything goes in the proper order – and to taste test it.

The Witch With No Name (iPad) Review

While under the influence of the potion, the witch’s story of how she lost her name is played on the crystal ball.

The Witch With No Name (iPad) Review

It would almost be a crime to continues with the screen captures – the best part of the story is what follows next. It absolutely utilizes all the assets the iPad offers and is the best integration of an interactive eBook story for a hand held device I’ve seen yet.

The animation is cute, the interactive parts of the book are just perfect for my Kindergartener and even my three year old preschooler enjoyed the eBook. A lot of thought went into this tale; while the story is cute, it’s the interactive parts and little side-games (e.g. finding the hidden cricket or pressing the frog’s reflection) that make this eBook a lot of fun. There was a bit of b-rated Kung-fu lip-syncing action going on when the story is read to you and the musical notes game has so much going on in the screen it’s a bit glitchy but even all that is charming and easily overlooked when you see the smiles from the players.

The replayability is absolutely there – both on the same level or on two additional levels. Even though the game isn’t that long it keeps their attention; I was testing it out when my five-year old sat down next to me and we ended up playing through the whole game in one sitting. When I went to go play the game again he was just as excited as he was the first go-round. The more difficult levels aren’t really that difficult but they are different on each level: the puzzle pieces are different shapes with more of them, the hidden adventure puzzle hid the item under more things and the music game at the end is a little more complex. If you miss something on the screen or make a mistake in the game it just rearranges the game and places you back at the start. The mistake isn’t even really addressed; it just repeats the instructions and you try again. You can also read the story; in this case the voices for the audio are off, as are the mouthing of the words. They give a reasonable amount of time for the lines to be read before allowing you to proceed, which is perfect for slower readers. Absolutely worth the $4.99 price tag – you don’t get this much from a Scholastic book.

The Witch With No Name (iPad) Review


Hanna

 
I grew up the lone girl a then-considered nerdy household, which involved Atari, Super NES and PC Gaming. I love all things pop culture, including the geekier realm of Star Wars, Science Fiction and yes, all things vampires. I found my love match with @TroyBenedict and I'm now a Haus Frau and mother of three boys, all of whom find MineCraft to be a gift from the Gods. I'm the Community Manager of the team - for a good times follow us on Twitter at @GamesFiends.com, on our Facebook & Google+ Pages as well as Pinterest and YouTube,


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