Alphabetic and Super 7 by No Monkeys
No Monkeys is the developer of Alphabetic and Super 7, pictured at the top of the post. Both of these are fast-paced games which are great for older kids and adults. One of the things that sets them apart from typical learning-based games is the way they look—the graphics aren’t your typical primary colors and cartoons. Yes, they’re colorful, but they have a crisp, clean graphic quality.
Alphabetic isn’t actually a new game, although it has had updates as recently as this summer. The idea is simple: tap on the letters of the alphabet, in order. The letters aren’t just going to sit still and let you find them, however—they spin, bounce, fall, zoom and dance across the screen in dizzying patterns. Did I mention you have a time limit? Finding a letter gives you a little more time on the clock, and finding them quickly gives you more points.
Once you’ve played through the basic game a few times, there are challenge games which crank up the difficulty level, cap off the timer, or challenge you to find each letter twice or the alphabet in reverse. There’s even a game for finding numbers instead of letters.
Although it’s not designed for very young children (even on the easy level they may not be able to catch all the letters in time), if you tap anywhere on the screen that isn’t the correct letter, the target letter will flash in the center of the screen, so my three-year-old was able to play this on her own—just not very well.
Fun value: 4/5
Educational value: 3/5
Alphabetic is $.99 or you can try out the Lite version for free.
Super 7 is a newer release, out this year, and it’s a math-based arcade game. Little heptagons appear from the edges of the screen and float around. You can redirect them as they float, or draw lines to connect them and they’ll be pulled together. Whenever two heptagons touch, they combine, adding the numbers shown. Add them up to 7, and they disappear, scoring you some points. Add up to more than 7 (or less than -7), and the game’s over.
Easy enough, right? But just wait until you start getting negative numbers. And then multipliers, which can easily put you over 7. When the screen starts getting crowded with a bunch of 4s and 5s, you’ll wonder why arithmetic isn’t always so nail-bitingly intense.
Again, this is one that isn’t for the wee geeklets, since they’ll need to know addition, subtraction, and multiplication. It’d be nice to have adjustable difficulty levels, so you could set it on “addition only” or something like that.
Fun value: 5/5
Educational value: 4/5
Super 7 is $.99, and according to the stats page I’ve already sunk over four hours into it.
