Common Sense Media Review
By Christy Matte
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Physics mini-games fall short of educational connections.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 6+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Download
Videos and Photos
May the Forces Be With You
Parent and Kid Reviews
What's It About?
MAY THE FORCES BE WITH YOU invites kids to explore physics concepts like gravity, friction, magnetism, pendulums, pulleys, and levers. Kids can read about some of the main concepts and see examples of how they work before playing the five mini-games. Mini-games involve storming a castle with a catapult, use magnets to create a path, swinging a pendulum to knock down a tower, using pulleys to build a structure, and stacking blocks to create a ramp. The games have three levels: earth, moon, and space. All of the level needs to be completed before you can move on to the next level.
Is It Any Good?
Games are a great way to teach physics concepts, but only if you're able to tie the activities to the educational content. May the Forces Be With You is a bright and colorful experience, but it's disjointed, confusing, and sometimes frustrating. The educational content is all located in one area of the app marked with a question mark. Some of the information is interesting, but many of the areas stop short of really getting kids to understand. Once kids enter the mini-games, there are no instructions or connection to what they are supposed to be learning. While there's "help" available for the games, it doesn't explain anything about what is going on or how to proceed. Controls can be glitchy and hard to use, and on multiple occasions the controls stuck with and couldn't move anything. There's no explanation of how the games might differ between the earth, moon, and outerspace levels. May the Forces Be With You unfortunately feels like an incomplete experience that could be cool with fewer glitches and a seamless blend of games and learning.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the physics prinicples featured in May the Forces Be With You. What are some examples of gravity, friction, and magnetism around your house?
Families can talk about learning with apps. Do you think this is a good app for learning? Why or why not? What can you learn?
App Details
- Devices : iPhone , iPod Touch , iPad
- Subjects : Science : gravity , physics
- Skills : Thinking & Reasoning : hypothesis-testing , solving puzzles
- Pricing structure : Paid ($2.99)
- Release date : March 3, 2020
- Genre : Educational Games
- Topics : STEM , Animals
- Publisher : Learny Land S.L.
- Version : 1.0
- Minimum software requirements : iOS 9.0 or later
- Last updated : September 30, 2025
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