Beck and Bo Review

Beck and Bo is a very enjoyable universal interactive app for toddlers and those in preschool. Part sticker app, puzzle activity and educational application, Beck and Bo helps children become familiar with objects of their world, such as animals or foods, allowing children to be both creative as well as working within certain parameters. Beck and Bo also includes a great sense of texture and style that I really enjoy.

After choosing a scene from the menu page, this app often opens up the offering of a simple sun that children are expected to drag and drop where the sun is found - the sky. No explanation is given to children, but this app is quite intuitive, and I really enjoy a great deal how one can hang the sun anywhere in the sky to propel this app forward to add other details such as clouds or the leaves of a palm tree, as well as the characters Beck and Bo, found throughout these landscapes, as are many varied animals.

To forward these scenes along, children will need to demonstrate cognitive abilities that also include placing the water or land creatures appropriately, such as in the ocean or on the beach or possibly savannah.

I also admire how flexible this app is, as one can place characters in a multitude of places as long as they are within the general rules of nature and common sense, also allowing children to experiment with dropping the sun to darken the sky and then being able to flick the sun around the page with the use of a physics engine.

Twelve scenes are included, all unique to themselves as well as quite content-rich. Topics include a beach theme, safari, train, cityscape and shopping or a winter theme, and often include a nice use of action, bringing life to these backdrops as well as a few subdued choices.

Those fond of paper art will certainly appreciate Beck and Bo, as each detail seen among these sections are created from bits of colorful cut paper stacked together to create all the objects seen within, as well as including distressed brown cardboard that is used as a border for each background and menu page. Of special note are trees made from translucent tissue paper, allowing players to peer through this translucence at the characters behind these trees, an especially well-done visual element.

I have had a few moments of difficulty with the placement of some of the leaves of other trees or the sails of a windmill. My son would also like to mention that the carnival section is flawed regarding a series of ducks which are stacked as one needs to knock down with a ball to forward the scene.

Do try to hit all the ducks down at once because if any of the ducks are still standing, it is impossible for my son and very, very hard for me to knock just one or two targets down because the physics of the ball makes it fly crazily around the page, and even if players are able to get a good shot at the last duck or two, the ball never hits them directly.

We both find this very frustrating, and my son has taken to simply avoid this section, but he does love spending time with the other motifs offered, especially the shopping area of this app.

I am also not a huge fan of the robotic, Seri-sounding voice that narrates the words that children are learning with the tap of every object they come across.

This is a disappointment as the robotic voice one hears narrate the objects one either taps and drags or simply touches among these pages keeps me from recommending this app to speech and language practitioners as pronunciation is not wonderful and lacks the inflections that only a human being could produce - a shame as this app also includes an area in each section of flash cards dedicated to the teaching of the words found within - a nice touch.

It would be nice to let users record their own words as an option in place of the provided narration as well as possibly including new narration from a child or adult speaker, bringing this app to another level that could be used in special educational settings.

Except for these issues, I am very impressed with the combination of free play and puzzle elements that test children’s basic cognition of the world around them.

My son finds this app quite intuitive and fun, and I love the textures and paper art found within. Although I would love to see a few changes made, I can easily recommend this app as something a little different and quite lovely to look at and explore.