All the robots are rendered with Toca Boca’s customary style and panache and are very appealing, each with its own distinctive character. Kids are encouraged to persevere by the endearing nature of what’s put before them. There’s also a fixed height limit of six blocks which can be frustrating for young architects, although it does help promote the use of pre-planning to get the desired design.
That means things like tall walls can be a little tricky to put together. One robot can build straight up, another can place blocks in the air but not on the floor, and then there’s the crane. It’s a very strange tension between free play, exploration, and simple challenge, which mostly manages that difficult balance but just occasionally falls off the side. If you could just conjure whatever blocks you wanted wherever you wanted them, it’d be amusing to doodle with for a while, but would quickly become boring. The different robots all have slightly different controls although there is commonality: a trackball-type movement control is a particular touch of genius.īut those kinds of small challenges that the app puts in the way of building whatever it is you want are part of its appeal. You’d expect that for the older audience, but this is perhaps ever so slightly too opaque: I had to sit and help my seven-year-old figure it out. The interface for all of this is slightly trickier than Toca’s earlier apps. There are several others, and you need to make them collaborate to realise your dreams. One drops lines of blocks, another winches and stacks them, a third colours them. All the building is mediated by one of a number of cute robot helpers. But by inverting the usual principles of simplicity, this app actually makes things more entertaining by putting a layer between the user and their goal. But, perhaps bored with the lack of challenge resulting from their mastery, they’ve decided to branch out into the realm of primary school children.Įnter Toca Builders, a game in which kids get to build three dimensional pictures out of coloured blocks. Apparently able to consistently make accessible, imaginative, fun apps out of thin air, their releases have become de-facto purchases for many parents. Toca Boca has become the name to contend with in the world of pre-schooler apps. Building bridges, and spaceships, and watermelons, and…
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