Parents' Guide to Happy Clinic

Kids need to figure out which patient to admit -- and what other tasks are the most urgent, but the pay-to-play structure keeps this from being a positive experience. While some guidance is provided at first, eventually you'll need to clean beds, call doctors, and keep things moving smoothly in Happy Clinic on your own. While some portions are automated, such as the doctor providing care, kids need to physically perform other actions. These can be scheduled, which helps when things get busy. Kids can line up them in the order they want them to be completed. Some parts of the premise are a little convoluted. Kids don't really find out why the narrator's granddaughter would be working at one medical center to fund purchases for another, for instance. As they complete to-do lists, they also unlock memories from her life, which don't seem significant. Patients also have brief profiles, but kids won't see them unless they click on people in the Patients tab after they've have been seen, so the information seems somewhat extraneous.

Kids can use coins to help increase a doctor's healing speed. The amount of money earned by playing, though, isn't enough to steadily add those items, and kids may need them because the game quickly intensifies its play. Patients have a partially filled-in circle above their heads when they arrive, which indicates how quickly they need to see a doctor, but you may not be able to provide help until quite some time after the person has been admitted for unexplained reasons. At first, figuring out what to do next can be fun -- once you reach the tenth level, however, the odds seem to be stacked against you. Once an angry patient walks out, the level ends. Kids can repeat it -- although they may not have much more success, if they don't have enough funds on hand to help them out. They may not actually be able to play Happy Clinic for long without feeling forced to buy in-app currency to continue --- or, sadly, be shut out of the game.