GardenLab – educational gardening app for kids

iPad | kids app for ages 6-8 yrs.

Today we want to introduce you to a new educational nature app for kids, which is available for iPad and iPhone. GardenLab fills your tablet with a colorful, digital garden, where kids can grow their own flowers, whilst watching and learning how nature works.

The game is presented in a beautiful 3D design with a change of day and night time.

An educational garden game

After kids have chosen which character they want to use (either a boy or a girl), they start off by standing in the middle of an empty garden with them, without any decorations. The sun is smiling in the background from up the sky, where the clouds are slowly passing by. Sun and clouds are playing an important role in this game, but first of all, you need to plant the seeds.

To be able to do so, kids need to dig a hole in the ground via finger touch and pick a seed, which will be offered in various colors throughout the game in the shop.

Change of night and day

Once the seed is planted, it takes a couple of days for the flower to grow to it’s full size and blooms at it’s best. Kids can influence the day and night time, by simply moving the sun across the horizon. Shortly after the moon appears, which can also be moved to speed things up a little.

Besides, the flowers need water regularly, which is delivered through the rain in this game. Simply grab a cloud from the sky and drag it over the flower. Tip: If you can’t see a cloud at the time in your game sequence, you can simply click on one of the wind turbines in the background.

Reproduction of plants

One special feature of this learning game is crossing the plants. Two different flowers need to be pollinated with the help of bees, through which new seeds are being produced. The color of the new seed is really interesting, it’s a mixture of the two initial colors. In a separate section of the app, you can see some special tasks. Many of them relate to breeding special flower colors, which can’t be bought in the shop.

Child-friendly shop without IAP

Don’t worry: there are no in-app purchases – the currency in this integrated shop are hearts, which are generated by planting flowers and plants. You cannot only buy flowers with the hearts, but also some garden decorations and clothes for your character in the game.

Less intuitive

The start of the game seemed a little difficult for some of the children in our team, as the navigation and controls are a little less intuitive. This is why it even took us a few goes, until we understood how the reproduction of the plants with the bees worked. Tip: The bees appear via finger touch on the blossom and only pollinate another blossom, if the finger is removed. Therefore not whilst flying by or hovering around the flower pot.

Expandable

You may be able to expand the garden with decorations, however these are only visual nature. We’re missing an alternative watering method such as a watering can or a garden hose. Even a troublemaker such as a crow would make  a scarecrow necessary and therefore provide for more game fun. Perhaps one should also think about expanding the garden one bit at a time.

Check out the YouTube trailer

GardenLab  kids app rating

GardenLab is an educational and friendly nature app, which helps children to understand the cycle of nature and the process of reproduction and growth of plants. Nevertheless, we’re not quite happy with the status quo. Improvements should be made with the controls, especially because of the age recommendation, which the app developers decided to recommend for kids ages 4+ – we however, recommend the game for kids ages 6 yrs. and above. Besides, we also wish for more surprises and new game elements.

Top best apps for kids rating: 3 stars

kids app developer: Jordi Antonijuan Artigas