Bugs and Buttons for iPhone and iPad and Bugs and Bubbles for iPhone and iPad are a pair of beautiful, entertaining, and educational games for kids that each feature 18 different games and activities with intriguing game play that progressively adapts to the player's skill level. Each activity also offers visual instructions making it easy for young players to understand the goal of each activity.
Bugs and Buttons/Bubbles become fun right at the start with their interactive home screens. You can pop bubbles, poke bugs, and have a trail of bees follow your finger. From the home screen, you can either hit start to begin playing through all the activities back-to-back, or you can head to the Explore screen to selectively choose which activity you want to play or visit your sticker collection.
Both games features 18 different unique games. In Bugs and Buttons, each game has bugs and/or buttons and in Bugs and Bubbles, each game has bugs and/or bubbles. The games are designed so that they start are very easy (borderline boring for adults), but as the player succeeds, the game becomes more difficult. In some of the of the activities, if the player fails at a level, they will just fall back to the previous level instead of immediately losing.
I'll spare you the pain of reading through a description of all 36 different activities, but here's a short list of the types of games include in Bugs and Buttons/Bubbles:
- Fling bees at a target flower
- Remove and sort bugs infesting the button production
- Catch buttons falling off Uncle Bob's button truck.
- Catch colorful fireflies in a jar
- Pinch and collect bubbles from an experimental bubble garden
- Trace letters on a foggy window with a green fly
The areas of learning that Bugs and Buttons/Bubbles focus on include counting, fine motor skids, path finding, patterns, sorting, tracking, shapes, letters, colors, balance, and more.
The good
- Gorgeous graphics
- 18 games and activities
- More than 45 minutes of beautiful music
- More than 36 achievement stickers to earn
- Automatics game play with graduated stages
- Advance multi-touch interactions
- Visual instructions
- Universal for iPhone and iPad
The bad
- Bugs and Buttons does not support multiple user profiles
The conclusion
Both Bugs and Buttons and Bugs and Bubbles are great apps for kids. The graphics are simply gorgeous and the game play is entertaining while still being educational. I highly recommend both of these games for anyone with younger kids -- they are especially nice on the iPad and iPad mini.
Reader comments
Bugs and Buttons/Bubbles for iPhone and iPad review
"I highly recommend both of these games for anyone with younger kids"
How young? As a parent who is always looking for fun and educational things to do with my son, recommendations without a suggested general age range are not very helpful.
Sorry about that, I really wanted to state an age, but I quite honestly don't know the best age group and the app description doesn't recommend an age. Many of the activities are a little too advanced for my 2 year old, but I think by 3 years old, she should be able to enjoy it. My guess is that 3-5yrs is the ideal age range for this game.