Review: ‘Metamorphabet’ Brings Fun to Learning Letters and Words

As a parent of a toddler, I try to be cautious about how much screen time I give my son and what content he is consuming. I try to find things that he finds fun and engaging while helping him to learn something. Because he’s just turned two, we’ve focused a lot on games that are either about the alphabet and spelling or that involve coloring and drawing. Unfortunately, there are plenty of mobile apps that are terrible in this arena.

Fortunately, Metamorphabet from Vectorpark is NOT one of those terrible apps. Quite the opposite in fact–Metamorphabet is both a stunningly beautiful and tactile alphabet and word experience.

The game starts, as you would imagine, with an A. Each letter is clearly enunciated for your child and then requires interaction, which varies by letter and word, to cause the letter to metamorphose into something else, while still retaining its basic letter shape. The correlating word is then also clearly enunciated and displayed on-screen. The reinforcement of the letter, the word, and the animation is great for little ones learning the alphabet and words.The letter B, for example, grows a beard, then a beak, and bugs and butterflies fly from the beak.

To give a better understanding of the mechanics, I’ll go in-depth on our favorite one–F. Poking the F causes it to grow a foot. Swiping up makes the foot start to hop around. After some more poking, the F suddenly grows feathers! The F will wibble and wobble in response to touching and swiping until it then grows a fan on its “nose.” The fan blades can be spun with a quick swipe. Going back to the jumping mechanic will make the F hop into the air and then take off, propelled by the fan blade.

The best part of all these metamorphoses is that there is no standard, repetitive mechanic for getting through the changes and letters. Each letter and word has its own way of getting to the next, so your child has to play around with it to cause the change and progress through the alphabet.

My son loves the game and asks to play it almost every morning since we first tried it. There are very few things that have captured our two-year-old’s attention this consistently and for this long. I highly recommend giving Metamorphabet a try. It is currently available on iOS and will be available on Mac and PC tomorrow.

Note: I was given a review copy of the game.

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