Happy Tunes
musical kids app
Today we’re going to introduce you to an educational musical games collection for both iPad and iPhone, which according to the app developer, has been produced with the help of child psychologists and Music teachers. 5 different types of educational games are available, which were divided into 32 levels with increasing difficulty levels. Don’t be surprised about the empty display at the beginning, because the scenery will be filled with objects as you play along, which you can then unlock by solving the tasks. Those objects have been provided with sounds, so that you can even play musical sounds with the rainbow.
Educational games
* Snowflake Xylophone – falling snowflakes need to be caught with the xylophone, whilst playing a tune.
* Petal memorizing game – a tune is being played to kids first, which they will need to repeat exactly as it has been played. The tone sequence will get longer each time.
* Sorting fruits – the fruits can only be sorted into the baskets by the different and funny sounds.
* Sound pairs with animals – each animals card belongs to a sound card
Rainbow Waterfall – famous kids tunes float down the rainbow waterfall as note-bubbles. Kids can catch the notes one by one and let the tunes sound.
As you can see, there are lots of imaginary and colorful activities for kids to discover in this app.
Not as easy as it seems
At least one game is kind of jumping out of line here with it’s difficulty. The difficulty level with the petal memorizing game was way too hard for kids in our testing team, so that they quickly lost all interest in it. This is due to the tone sequences, which do get quite complicated at times, but also the plain-colored presentation of the flower is really confusing for kids.
In similar memorizing games, the colors are usually associated to a certain sound. With Happy Tunes the color is only visible when it flashes, so that kids loose out on being able to memorize the actual color. Another confusing feature is the flashing red center of the flower, which is supposed to signal as to when kids are meant to start repeating the tune and when they’re not. In 2 out of 3 cases, kids will press the center first, which is no surprise as all other petals light up in the same way too.
Another frustrating thing is that you can’t skip any levels throughout the first round.
Only, once the levels have been unlocked, kids can skip their way through the activities. In the worst case, parent will have to unlock the petal game for kids, so that they’re able to get to the other activities.
You can however tell, according to the update 1.1 by the app developer, that they are willing to optimize and update the app on one or the other places.
Read the improvements of the 1.1 version so far (of iTunes)
– Synced sounds;
– Improved animations;
– Improved sounds on the rainbow;
– Enhanced application performance;
– Improved graphics;
– Simplified gameplay.
We can therefore hope that the app developer might change the difficulty level of the petal game. It would also be brilliant if it was possible to skip through the levels freely.
Check out the YouTube video for more informations about the app, this way you can also get the idea of the acoustic features of the kids app.
Happy Tunes kids app rating:
Pro’s
(+) visually and acoustically brilliant and remarkable also very imaginative
(+) very nice bonus landscapes to unlock
(+) trains the sense of hearing and memory of kids
Con’s
(-) Difficulty level of the petal memorizing game
(-) levels cannot be skipped through
Top best apps for kids rating: 4 stars
Download Happy Tunes
➔ App download for – iPad & iPhone on Apple App Store
kids app test based on app version 1.1
