I'm not an advocate of handing your $600 cell phone over to a preschool aged child, though Monkey Preschool Lunchbox (or MPL as I call it) is. Free today, if you've got childrens in your life, hit up the store and grab this game just to say you own it. Heck, there is nothing wrong with giving this a go yourself.
A couple nice things about this app are that its relatively original. Its not trying to copy any other company's leaping frogs or mini mouses, if you know what I mean. MPL also is brightly colored while maintaining focus on the puzzle being presented. The pace is relatively quick for a children's learn game with nearly no menu. One press of the 'PLAY' button is all thats needed. Lastly since MPL is for children ages 2-5, it does not require them to be able to read. There is written instructions at the top of the screen while the friendly voice over tells your child what to do.
This game is not perfect though. It does not continue to run in the background. Though this feature request may not be a popular one, if your child is in the middle of a game and accidentally quits, they will need to start over. This is not a big problem though because of the type of game this is, sort of like an arcade game. Which also indicates that there is no long term draw to the game. The game does award players with stickers at the completion of a few puzzles, but there is not constructive a child can do with these stickers beyond actually picking one.
MPL falls short in diversity also. I counted about a half dozen different games that appear randomly and randomize the letter, number, color, or fruit that are involved. Also, once the game is played for about 2 minutes, the user may realize that the difficult just does not change. Remember I said this game was targeted for ages 2-5? Its more for ages 2-3. Your 4-5 year old should be doing or playing something else, and hopefully shouldn't need MPL to learn about fruit.
My 4 year old likes this game, but is not challenged by it. Even still, its worth $Free.99.
Monkey Preschool Lunchbox -
