Tag Archives: Augmented Reality

Review: Beasts of Balance

Beasts of Balance
Photo-A-Day #4540

We received a copy of the new game Beasts of Balance for free to play with and review. Opinions are our own.

I saw Beasts of Balance for the first time at Blogger Bash and Sweet Suite 2017. I even got to play a little while and the game looked quite interesting to me. Today we played as a family (minus Eva, she was doing her own thing). But Andrew and Allison were interested in playing this game. There is much more to this game than merely stacking oddly shaped pieces. Each piece does something in the game and you quickly realize that you need to not only balance the physical items but also the world that you are creating in the app. Yes, this game is an augmented reality stacking game of dexterity, strategy and creation. Continue reading Review: Beasts of Balance

Andrew Decided to Get Quirious

Get Quirious
Photo-A-Day #4534

The other day on Twitter I was approached by Get Quirious App to see if I wanted to review their Explorer Box and app. I said yes and they sent me a free copy of this new augmented reality imaginative toy. Opinions are my own.

I’ll be honest. I’ve got a huge backlog of reviews of toys and products, but I knew that this was something that I could just give to Andrew and he could run with it. I loaded the app onto his iPad and gave him the Explorer box. He opened it and immediately picked up the Treasure Hunt mat. He did it as it came in black and white but you can actually color in the mats yourself. The next thing I knew, he was wandering all around the living room finding items in the treasure hunt. I then left for work.

The next time I talked with Andrew he was telling me all about how be made spaceships and stories. He showed me how those parts of the app worked and he was an expert at it. The Build a Story game lets you pick five cards from a 16 card deck and scan them. Then the app puts those scanned items into a story that was read to us. Each time he does the Build a Story game he gets a new story.

Then he showed me the Build a Space Ship part of the app. With this game he picks 4 cards to build a customer space ship. Then he can fly the space ship around in the app.

The last part of the app is Mask Play. There are four masks that you can cut out and your child can wear. When you aim the iPad at the child their face becomes the character. You can then record your own voice and then change the voice to make it sound higher and lower, faster and slower. Andrew giggled like crazy over that.

This is a sweet little app that is a great one for kids to do on their own for imaginative play and develop their motor skills, hand-eye coordination and multi modal learning. It is great to see Andrew’s excitement over this game and his learning and creativity.