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Puzzlfy IOS App Review

Puzzlfy IOS App Review

puzzlfy-logo

Before I get to the review I want to give you full disclosure of something. Puzzlfy is an app developed by Radius 60. I am an employee of Radius 60 and was asked to review the app on my website. I was not involved with the development of the app but did look at a beta version of the app before it was released. This review is in no way affected by any outside influence beyond the request of a review. I am reviewing the app based on what could be considered a review copy of the app. 

Puzzlfy is an app for the iPad and Android tablets and is made for kids 4+ so instead of me reviewing the app I had my niece Erin (who is 7) and nephew Adrian (who is 5) play with the app and have them talk about it. Before the videos I would like to talk about the app and my impressions of it. We played the IOS iPad version but I am told that the Android version has the same identical functionality.

The description from the developer is, Puzzlfy turns anything into Puzzle! Just snap a picture, or add from your personal photos and hit the Puzzlfy button to start solving. Puzzlfy is also the first app in the world to turn any video into puzzle. You can add stickers, and change the level of difficulty to add more puzzle pieces. It’s hours of productive fun for all ages. The app is also registered with a kidSAFE Seal.

I am obviously not the target audience for the game but it’s a pretty interesting idea. I played it a few times before I let the kids have at it. For me it had pretty limited replay value after a couple of times of doing it but then again it’s not made for me. One of the neat features is that you can play a video and pause it and make a puzzle out of it. This could be really interesting for home movies or other video sources. The other thing is the stickers that allow the user to add stickers to the picture and adjust the size and placement. Here are what the kids thought of the app.

First up is Adrian who is 5 years old and is a little shy but I was able to get a short video of him

Next up is Erin who is very obviously not camera-shy and was eager to tell me about it.

I had taken pictures of both kids and let them play around with placing the stickers on them and this is what they did with their pictures.

Adrian Before:

adrian-before

Adrian After:

adrian-after

Erin Before:

erin-before

Erin After:

erin-after

Here are some of the preloaded backgrounds that the kids added stickers to. The second picture is from one of the videos in the app.

puzzlfy-1puzzlfy-2

The kids did like playing and doing the puzzles. The big hit was the stickers that you can add to the picture. I did notice that there were some control issues with the app. The stickers were a little difficult for the kids to control and they would sometimes fall off the screen an disappear. The other issue was that when they were trying to put the puzzle together the bar on the side was very difficult for them to control. When they were trying to control the up and down cycle of the puzzle pieces there were a number of times that the app would get hung up on a puzzle piece and the kids would get a little frustrated because the bar wouldn’t go up and down with ease. They should add something like a scroll wheel that might help with this issue. While the freezing of the videos is a really neat idea, the kids didn’t really seem too interested in it. The other nice thing about the app is that you can adjust the difficulty of the puzzle because I had to make it easier for Adrian and that is a really nice touch. With the stickers being such a huge hit with them both the developers might want to allow the kids to make their own stickers from photos or maybe an editing program within the app. The app does save the photo to your library but at a reduced resolution that seemed a little odd. For some reason you have to double tap the menu button on the main page that was pretty strange. Overall the controls are good but do need to be tightened up due to the fact that kids will be using this. It seems as if the developers didn’t have kids test it and see how they interacted with it. There are no major flaws in the app just some odd interface functions.

In the end the kids seem to like playing with Puzzlfy and it seem to keep their attention. While the kids only played with the app for about an hour or so I can’t say how it will hold up in the long-term. I think there is a lot of good ideas in the app and their are a lot of things that could be added to make the app last longer than say a game. The age range is pretty narrow on the app and kids are fickle so they may play it heavily for a period of time and move on to something else. If the developers can continue to add content it could extend the life of the app well. Currently the app is free and is worth a download if you have kids in the right age range. The one thing that I did like about the app is that it made the kids use there brains to solve the puzzles instead of just playing a mindless game that they are so used to doing most of the time.

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