Duck Duck Moose was one of the first children’s app developers we noticed when we started Apps Playground several years ago. It has been a reliably excellent producer of inventive apps ever since, notching up more than 10m downloads of its products. If you’ve not tried them, now may be a good time: the company…
Pokémon Go is a bonafide mobile games craze, with more than 75m downloads so far. But a new partnership in Japan between the game and McDonald’s is proving controversial. In Japan, McDonald’s has paid to have thousands of its restaurants classified as Pokémon Go gyms, where people can battle one another. A clever way of…
Is a Fraggle Rock app really for children, or for the parents who grew up with the TV show and are nostalgic for their youth? I ask because Apps Playground co-founder Alice is currently beaming from ear-to-ear after five minutes of playing with Fraggle Rock Music Maker, a new iPhone and iPad app from Playtales….
The Talking Friends apps are a phenomenon among children and adults alike, with Talking Tom Cat, Talking Ginger and friends having been downloaded 1.2bn times, with 170m people playing with them every month. The release of a new Talking Friends app is big news, then. Developer Outfit7 has just launched My Talking Tom, the latest…
Our six-year-old hasn’t quite got the Horrible Histories bug yet. I’m nudging him towards it for purely selfish reasons: so I can watch lots of episodes of the marvelously gruesome children’s TV show. If your kids are already fans, here’s some good news: the official Horrible Histories magazine has just launched a digital edition for…
Earlier this year, the UK’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) announced plans to investigate children’s apps and games for their use of in-app purchases, advertising, and personal data. Tonight, it has published its initial report, based on examining 38 apps and web games, and around 200 submissions from parents, developers, and other interested parties. It’s…
Wondering whether the animated film Hotel Transylvania will be up your children’s street? There’s an app for deciding that: Hotel Transylvania Movie BooClips. It’s a storybook app by Castle Builders based on the vampiric Sony Pictures Animation flick, with animation, music, and voice narration complementing the text. Meanwhile, 19 clips from the actual film are…
In March last year, we wrote about an augmented reality app for kids called AR Flashcards – Animal Alphabet, which involved printing out special markers and pointing your iPhone’s camera at them to see virtual animals. Now developer Mitchlehan Media has released a follow-up that ditches the animals in favor of something more… galactic. The…
As big numbers go, this one’s big. The Despicable Me: Minion Rush game has now been downloaded 100m times on iPhone, iPad and Android according to its publisher Gameloft. The game is proving hugely popular with children and parents alike, it seems. We’re not sure how many people have seen the actual film it’s based…
One of the reasons for recent high-profile cases of children spending lots of money inside apps is that many parents don’t really understand in-app purchases and how to restrict them. Apple is taking action. The company has launched a Learn More About In-App Purchases’ guide on its App Store, which explains in clear language what…