The App Starts Free and Offer More for a Price
Kodable starts off with 30 puzzles in the world of Smeeborg. If your child likes those, parents can add more content by buying it as an in-app purchase. The purchasable content adds 60 more puzzles: 30 set in the world of Function Junction and an additional 30 puzzles in separate world of Bugs Below, which is full of debugging challenges.
The Set-Up
Kodable starts with a spaceship full of fuzzy ball-like creatures crash-landing on the planet of Smeeborg which is full of Technomazes. To help the fuzzFamily, you need to program them to move through a series of mazes. As they roll through, the Fuzzes collect coins, earn stars for completing maze levels, and unlock new colored Fuzzes to program.
How to Play
Kids program the Fuzzes to move through the mazes by dragging arrows from the top right of the screen into ordered boxes in the top left. The arrows indicate the direction the Fuzz should move to get through the maze. There are coins scattered throughout the maze, so programming the Fuzz to roll over the money is the key to earning the most stars at the end of the maze.
In addition to directional programming, this first world of puzzles also introduces kid to "if this, then that" programming as well as loops so that they can group commands together for repetition.
App Analysis
The Fuzzes are adorable balls of energy and their rolling is accompanied by upbeat music, making the programming fun. Kodable feels like you are playing a puzzle game that gets progressively harder. That said, its progression is just right. Kids are motivated to keep playing because they can unlock new Fuzzes.
Kodable distinguishes itself from other programming apps such as Tynker by providing excellent interactive tutorials that are fully voiced and a Learning Guide that explains concepts to parents and teachers and offers the solutions to all of the puzzles.
Best For
If your child likes puzzles or logic challenges, start him or her with the free
Kodable app. If your child gets hooked on this coding, then unlock the rest of the app by paying $6.99.
Teachers, there is a separate version for classrooms that lets you have separate student profiles. It is called
Kodable Class and is available
here.
This updated Kodable app review was written by Jinny Gudmundsen, The original review was published on March 24, 2014.
All tech products are judged on a five star scale by looking at the following factors: fun, education, ease of use, value, and technical.
