50 States - Best Educational Game
By Christy Matte,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Decent geography game roadblocked by ads.
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50 States - Best Educational Game
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What’s It About?
50 STATES - BEST EDUCATIONAL GAME is a a game to learn about the U.S. states, their capitals, and their location on the map. There also are bits of trivia, such as the location of certain landmarks, state flags, and state mottos. In the main game, kids are asked multiple-choice questions about a state. If they answer correctly, they are given the chance to drop that state on a platform. The goal is to stack the states high enough (without them toppling over) to reach a line. If they get a wrong answer, the line moves up. If kids can reach the line, they earn a state in their main menu map. As kids collect states, they unlock bonus mini-games: Map It, Join 2, Pile Up, and Capital. The games involve skills such as placing states on the map, joining states together like a puzzle, identifying states by shape, and identifying the capital.
Is It Any Good?
While basically a knockoff of Stack the States, this decent educational geography game has an overabundance of ads, even in the paid version. 50 States - Best Educational Game may not be an original idea, but it's cute and colorful and silly. It suffers from the inability to choose a level or select which states/facts to include, and it has no instructions. Some of them are tricky -- matching two states along their border requires a strong memory or a nearby map -- but players can skip the mini-games they don't enjoy. The states are so sad (or indignant) when there's a wrong answer in the quiz that kids may be tempted to choose incorrectly just to see their response. The overwhelming drawback of this title is the constant advertising, some of which parents likely will find inappropriate for younger audiences. There's no way to completely remove it, even with the premium in-app upgrade. Also, some of the states are slightly misshapen which may cause some confusion. Massachusetts, in particular, is missing its distinctive curved region. There's a lot of promise here, but if you want ad-free educational content for your kids, you'll have to look elsewhere, even if you're willing to pay for it.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about advertising. What role does it play? How do you know what to believe and what to question? How do you feel about the ads in 50 States - Best Educational Game?
Talk about in-app purchases and how/if kids can request purchases from an adult. What are the family rules?
Make a list of states you've visited as a family or would like to visit. Mark them on a map. What are some interesting things about each state?
App Details
- Devices: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad
- Subjects: Social Studies: geography
- Skills: Thinking & Reasoning: applying information, solving puzzles, strategy
- Pricing structure: Free ($4.99 to remove ads)
- Release date: February 17, 2017
- Category: Educational Games
- Topics: History
- Publisher: Chill Fleet
- Version: 1.0
- Minimum software requirements: iOS 8.0 or later
- Last updated: February 23, 2017
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