Pok Pok Playroom is a mobile app with activities for young kids to do.  They’re not really ‘games’ per se, just fun little quiet time things to mess around with.  You pay a monthly subscription and then your kids can play it without ads and you don’t need to go on the Internet to play, so that’s nice.  There are no words so kids can play with no help from parents.  Here’s a list of the games on here so far.  I imagine that in the future, they can update it with more activities.  But for now there are six things to do.  Since there are no words, I gave each activity my own names, just so you know.

“Playing Cars”

I think of all the activities on here, this one’s my favorite.  You know those rugs you can get that have roads and houses on them so kids can play ‘cars’ on them?  Yeah I wish we had those kinds of rugs when I was a kid, I think I’d use the heck out of them back then.  Anyway, that’s what this game is like.  You have a town with all sorts of cars you can drag across the roads using the touch screen.  Buses, garbage trucks, bulldozers, etc.  There are also people and animals you can tap on and drag around, too.  I put a sheep in a farm tractor and drove that around.  Some of the buildings are interactive, too.  You can send the garbage trucks through a recycling center and I put a bulldozer in the car wash.  That was pretty great.  You can also drive around boats in a river.  No airplanes in an airport or rocketships, though.  Darn it!  Maybe in the future they can make randomly generated towns for this mode so it’s different every time.  Anyway, I can see kids really liking this mode.  I loved ‘playing cars’ as a kid and most kids I’ve been around like that, too.  Heck, I still like ‘playing cars’ with kids!  I don’t care, it’s fun!

“Drawing”

This is a simple paint program where you draw with your finger on the touch screen.  There is a slider that you can move up and down to erase your drawings.  It kind of reminds me of those “Magna-Doodle” toys.  When my little brother Jeff was very young, he LOVED playing with those Magna-Doodle toys and would wear them out and we’d have to buy him new ones!  Now you can get those toys at the dollar store, so there have been times where we’ve bought one for him as a gag gift for Christmas, knowing how much he loved them when he was little!

“Switches”

This mode has a bunch of different virtual knobs and buttons and levers and switches to play with, and they make all sorts of sounds and animations.  It kind of reminds me of those baby activity centers you can clip on the side of a crib, or ones that you can put on a high chair or car seat or whatever.  The screen looks like an aircraft dashboard with all the buttons and switches!

“Words”

No there’s not really any words here, just TONS of objects, animals, and people you can click on and they’ll do different things.  I think this mode would be played best by a parent and child together.  The parent or child could tap on something and the parent could say the name of whatever was tapped on, or try to get the child to name it.  Really good vocabulary building activity.

“Shapes”

There’s a bunch of shapes you can drag around and bump and bounce into other shapes and they’ll react different with sounds and whatnot.  Some shapes bounce around, others are oozy like jelly.

“Dress Up.”

Different pieces will fall down from above and you can stack them to make people or animals.  Some are heads, middles, bottom legs, etc.  You can make totem poles or other monstrosities.

Kid Factor:

And those are all the games!  This is a very high quality program, but I can’t help but think when kids get to a certain age, like six or so, that they may want more goal-oriented games and might get bored with this.  And while this would be perfect for younger kids, some parents may not be comfortable with them playing on their expensive and breakable devices for that long.  Plus many of these activities would be just as fun with regular toys, books, blocks, etc.  But there are times when these toys aren’t available, like car trips and such, so that’s where this program would work best.

Tags: Game Reviews