Tested: Krakeln
#Developer: Claus Schunk
#Website: https://krakeln.eu/
#Purchase: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/krakeln/id1337094156?mt=8
#Version: 1.1
#Cost: Free to play Demo, $0.99 to unlock all levels (at time of review)
Please note that we received a donation to review this released app.
#Support: Requires iOS 8.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
#Size: 40.3 MB
#Screenshots:
#Developers Description
The family-friendly child’s play for pre-school age without advertising!
Playful family game for learning letters, words and pictures.
The free multilingual app is designed to allow older children to learn foreign languages or to grow up in a bilingual environment.
The child-friendly application is characterised by the fact that there is no advertising in the application and complicated operation has been dispensed with.
A special feature are the ascending water bubbles with all elements of a level. The bubbles can be brought to bursting, so a lot of fun is pre-programmed.
Playful learning is suitable for primary school or preschool. Full offline capability eliminates the need for an active Internet connection during game play
Accompany Krakel on a journey with many adventures. There are some surprises waiting for you on your way. You will know them when they appear.
You will be able to name them when you see them.
But the most important thing is - you will learn to literally describe them.
Alone or together with your parents you will learn how to use the alphabet in a playful way. If it’s too boring for you, you can prove what other language you’ve got. Soon you’ll be playing in a league with the big players and maybe you’ll learn something from them soon. Be ready, face the challenge and be ahead of others.
#The Review
Krakeln is a fun way to help your child with spelling in a super friendly ‘no-pressure’ environment. 16 great levels covering all aspects of life (Food, Clothes, Farm Animals, Sea Creatures, Music, Jobs, Transport, Household objects, Bugs, Safari, Wildlife, Colours, Vegetables and Fruit) with lots of recognisable visual clues to help the child solve the puzzles. The child gets to take their time, and if they make a mistake, it simply highlights the incorrect letter by flashing ‘red’ and allows the child to try again, thus building up to the answer, and seeing the finished word. At the end of the level, the child is presented with pictures in cute little bubbles for them to pop, before moving on to the next set of word puzzles.
The great thing about this spelling app is that it supports English and 3 other popular foreign languages (French, Spanish and German). The child is able to toggle to the country of choice and select and attempt the same puzzle sets. A heads up, parents will definitely get a chance to test their own language skills, whilst assisting their child to help with the translations. if all else fails, the child can work through the spelling in a trial and error wy, where the child benefits from seeing the completed word alongside the picture, which provides great language learning.
#The Test
This app was thoroughly enjoyed ‘lots’ by Poppy, and was a great way to challenge her spelling, which definitely needs improving. She enjoyed playing through all the levels over and over again, each level having a large set of cute illustrations with all the required letters available, yet all jumbled up, ready for her to solve the puzzle.
Poppy found the English words fairly easy, but there was definitely lots of challenging and fairly long words mixed within the sets. One of the best features of the app is that each time you load the puzzle set, you get a different order of the words, which provides a more enjoyable experience.
Now trying the foreign languages was a different story for both of us! I never was a great languages student, and we both had to focus hard to build out the words, and this is an area where the app definitely needs a helpful little feature adding that would highlight clues, like the ‘starting letter of the word’, as this was something that we struggled with German and Spanish.
Poppy found herself playing mainly in English, especially if I wasn’t there to help. Her favourite set of puzzles were what she called ‘under the sea’, which included lots of favourites (Sharks, Mermaids and Whales).
In its current form, the app is great, however, we would love to see the ability to toggle through the languages during play or even to be able to toggle the language of the completed word, allowing the child to complete the word ‘Monkey’ in English, and then have the ability to display the word in French ‘singe’. That said it didn’t take anything away from our experience and Poppy’s enjoyment. I felt that the app was a big hit!
#The Verdict
‘Krakln’, a wonderful word puzzle app for pre-schoolers.
#The Rating
Overall: 5/5
Look & Feel: 5/5 - Delightful pictures and pleasing themes
Enjoyment: 5/5 - The ‘no-pressure’ environment and simple interface really encouraged repeat play with varying levels of difficulty.
Playability: 5/5 - Easy for your child to navigate and plenty of sets and images to choose from.
Value for Money: 5/5 - This app is ‘free’ to play with a great demo, and only 99c to unlock all the levels.
