Forestry App Review
The full version of this app will be free from April 1st-April 5th, 2015!
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App Overview
Breathe in the fresh mountain air as you explore this fun app called Forestry. There is whimsical music, forest characters, and a lot of exploration to be had. Forestry is all about inviting kids to explore nature. The child will help animals find food, pick up berries, take a bath, and much more. These small but fun tasks encourage free play and imagination. Your child will be entranced with the 17 interactive locations, the auto play feature, and the playful sound effects. The developer for this app is a company called Ingame. They mainly focus on games about nature, and the importance of environmental awareness. It was a lot of fun to review this app with my two kids and see what they liked most. Come and explore the fun features within Forestry.
App Features
When you first enter the main menu, you will see many options. You can read about the game, change the language, set up auto play, choose your animal to begin exploring with, or purchase new animals and new levels for the game. I did purchase the set of 6 animals for $1.99. Without the in-app purchase, you can still play a few games and explore but you won’t be able to master the game or complete it. It made the app a lot more fun and exciting with the purchase. Once the child starts playing the game, they will click on an animal and go to a certain “mini-game”. It is confusing at times to know exactly what the task is. I was stumped a few times when helping my two boys but eventually a thought bubble will come up with picture directions. The thought bubble will show up next to the animal and show a picture of what the animal character is supposed to be doing. Once the thought bubble comes up, it is easy to figure out what to do.
Exploring Nature
The child is able to explore the forest surroundings by simply clicking on different objects throughout the scene. I love this feature and have seen it more recently in different apps for children. It makes a big difference in getting the child to engage with their surroundings. The child can click on the sky, the mountains, the other animals within the scenery and they will all move, or make a noise. My son was often distracted from the game because he was having so much fun clicking everything but because this games’ purpose is to help the child interact with nature, I would say that it is a successful feature.
Auto-Play Feature
The auto-play feature is my favorite feature in this app. Sometimes my kids just want to watch the app and see how things unfold without having to do anything. It really turns the forest world into a picture storybook app where you can simply watch and see what happens. There are no words or subtitles but you can watch the bear pick up the berries and see the birds fly and hear all of the great sound effects as you go from scene to scene. For children who have special needs, developmental delays, autism, down Syndrome, or also just younger children and infants, this would be a perfect setting to start with.
Parent Controls
The Forestry app is best suited for preschoolers. My 3 year old loved it and was obsessed. My 5 year old who will be entering Kindergarten did play the game as well and liked it but it wasn’t as challenging for him. What I always look for when purchasing an app for little kids is the parent controls. While there is in-app purchasing available, it has a security feature where you have to do a math problem to exit from the app to the store. Most kids would not be able to solve the problem, especially not preschoolers. My older son did enjoy trying to solve the problem however and so tougher math problems might be a good improvement. Also, there are no third party ads! Hooray. I hate those.
What’s Great About This App
Overall, I think Forestry is a fun and exciting app for kids between the ages of 2-6 years of age. My favorite feature is definitely the auto-play. I think it’s a unique and fun feature that allows the app to tell a picture story to the child rather than just interacting through games. I do believe that this app helps kids explore and understand more about nature, mountains, and forest animals. While the app is free, you will have to purchase the $1.99 animals to continue playing the game. The great thing is that from April 1st to April 5th, this entire app including the in-app purchases will be free! Be sure to take advantage of this great promotion and visit the app store to get it. Also, One small improvement I would love to see in the future would be a social story or element to the app that talks about how kids can participate in helping nature or how they can be more environmentally aware.
The InGame website contains other nature and animals apps for children. At the time of writing this review Forestry is free. The developers of Forestry have decided to make the full IOS version of this app free including the in-app purchases which retails for $1.99. This will only last from April 1st to April 5th so be sure to take advantage of this special promotion and get the entire app for free!
Download Forestry in the App Store
A fun app for exploring nature and forest animals
