Parents' Guide to Springin' - Create, Share, and Play

App iPhone , iPod Touch , iPad Free to try Educational Games
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Common Sense Media Review

Christy Matte By Christy Matte , based on child development research. How do we rate?

age 11+

Game creator has great potential but steep learning curve.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 11+?

Any Positive Content?

  • Springin' App: Screenshot #1
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Parent and Kid Reviews

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age 12+

Based on 1 kid review

 

 

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Privacy Rating Warning

  • Unclear whether personal information is sold or rented to third parties.
  • Unclear whether personal information are shared for third-party marketing.
  • Unclear whether this product displays personalised advertising.
  • Unclear whether data are collected by third-parties for their own purposes.
  • Unclear whether this product uses a user's information to track and target advertisements on other third-party websites or services.
  • Unclear whether this product creates and uses data profiles for personalised advertisements.
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What's It About?

SPRINGIN' - CREATE, SHARE, AND PLAY allows kids to create their own games and interactive animations. Kids start by drawing everything they need; there's no built-in clip art, but they can use camera images. They'll draw characters, buttons, and even the directions for how to play. From there, they can drag each element onto the screen and apply a variety of features to it. Perhaps it's a button that makes another object do something. Maybe it grows in size when triggered, or maybe it bounces off other objects. Some of the options cause items to interact with and control each other. Kids can also add gravity in any direction they want. The games can have multiple scenes, such as an opening scene, a main game page, and win/lose pages. Once a game is complete, kids can share it via upload. They get a unique QR code for each upload that they can share with friends, and they also have a page with all of their uploaded creations.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say : Not yet rated
Kids say ( 1 ):

For creative kids with a lot of focus and drive, there's no limit to what can be created with all of the tools available, but it might be a bit tricky for kids looking for an easy creative experience. Springin' - Create, Share, and Play removes some of the barriers to this type of creation by hiding the logic and the actual commands behind premade actions and reactions. The flaw is that it's missing some of the basics that would make the entire experience more accessible, such as tool tips for the attributes buttons, a paint bucket fill, and a text tool. Every time kids want to use a new attribute (e.g., jump, shrink, Force: Up, reset), they will need to look it up in a help guide, which explains what the attribute is but not how to use it, and possibly includes a video. The videos often show the attribute at work but, once again, have no explanation of how to actually use it. Text needs to be hand drawn, which seems a bit silly when text tools are so readily available in pretty much any other creativity app. As a result, it's a powerful tool for kids, but simply not as user-friendly as it could be.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about appropriate online behavior and what is -- and is not -- OK for including in a game that is shared publicly on Springin' - Create, Share, and Play.

  • How do the elements of your game work together? Try sketching out your vision for the game with all of the elements you'll need in advance.

  • Talk about screen use. How do you like this app as compared with other apps you could play? If you have limited time for screen use, would you pick this app over other apps on your device? Why, or why not?

App Details

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