Two new dinosaur apps roar into iTunes
Do your children love dinosaurs? Here are two new dinosaur apps that deliver the raucous, roaring, sod-shaking stomping and constant chomping they adore.
In Dino Tales, your child sees the prehistoric world through the eyes of a baby dinosaur as it explores. Those explorations turn into a story that parents and children can enjoy together. With Go Home Dinosaurs, a funny tower defense game, kids help a gopher protect his BBQ from marauding dinosaurs. Here's a closer look.
Kuato Games, best for ages 6-10, $3.99, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad
Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 4)
This groundbreaking dinosaur app mixes gaming and reading. Kids hatch a baby dinosaur and then lead it on adventures in a lush, 3D prehistoric world. The app documents the child's gaming adventure by creating a storybook, complete with screenshots of the baby dinosaur's journey. If the player and the baby dino visit a mysterious cave or slide down a giant lava flow, those events will appear in the storybook. Darwin, a talking dinosaur, guides your child's adventure by providing directions to places to visit and answering factual questions about dinosaurs.
The app has nifty parental controls, including the ability to set the child's reading level, which is reflected in the book and the questions kids can ask Darwin. Parents can also set the length of the adventure, and be notified when there is a new storybook to enjoy with their child.
As kids stomp around this lush world, they can collect fossils, minerals and five other baby dinosaur friends. By finding berries, they open a painting activity which allows them to change their baby dinosaur's coloring.
This fun exploration app is hindered somewhat by a clunky control system of having to use a virtual joystick instead of simply leading the dinosaur with your finger. And Darwin's synthesized voice distracts from enjoying his otherwise interesting interchanges. Nevertheless, this app is a great way to tickle a fossil-lover's fancy while also encouraging reading.
Bonus Tip: If you own an Android device, Dino Dog - A Digging Adventure with Dinosaurs is a polished adventure game that plays on that system. Click here to read my review.
Fire Hose Games, best for ages 9-up, $4.99 on iPad, $9.99 on Steam
Rating: 4 stars
This hilarious strategy game features dinosaurs as the bad guys. Players control a gopher who is having a barbeque in its backyard. Drawn to the smell of grilling meat, hordes of looting dinos arrive to snarf up the grub. Luckily, this coconut-gathering rodent has weaponized puzzle pieces at his disposal which, when placed on his lawn grid, eliminate the dinosaurs as they stomp down the garden path.
Go Home Dinosaurs is a tower defense game, similar in format to the widely popular Plants vs. Zombies. In this series of 60 puzzles, players observe the zigzagging path the incoming hordes of dinosaurs will follow, and then they select funny, dinosaur-fighting weapons to place along the path. When the puzzle level starts, players direct the gopher to trees to pick up coconuts — the currency to unlock the weapons. Then they purchase weapons and place them on the lawn grid. Each weapon has a unique shape and can only be placed if it doesn't overlap the path, other weapons or obstacles.
The weapons are manned by other gophers and involve silly gadgetry, such as the "Snowflake Sentry" who shoots "freeze technology" to slow a dinosaur and inflict damage to its life meter. As the puzzles progress, more powerful dinosaurs appear which the player counters by unlocking potent and zanier weapons.
This gameplay is both strategic and frenetic as the dinosaurs arrive in hordes. By making the weapons span more than one grid square in a variety of shapes, players need to study the lawn before the level begins to figure out where to place the weapons for maximum damage. The dinosaurs each has charm and personality, and the weapons to counter them are hilarious. The game stays fresh with new dinosaurs and weapons appear frequently. With no in-app purchases to skew the strategy, this puzzle game offers level after level of delightful dino mayhem.
Bonus tip: If you want more apps for your fossil fanciers, click here for my list of top-rated dinosaur apps.
Jinny Gudmundsen is the Editor of www.TechwithKids.com and author of iPad Apps for Kids, a For Dummies book. Contact her at techcomments@usatoday.com. Follow her @JinnyGudmundsen.