Childsplay

Teaching children with the help of educational software has many advantages, because learning through playing fun games allows them to easily gain new knowledge and skills. Schools or kindergartens that require a collection of easy-to-use computer games might encounter difficulties finding such a package. Childsplay will offer a friendly collection of games that provide learning by cognitive stimulation through memory challenges, puzzles, mouse training or classic arcade games such as PacMan or Ping-Pong.

Childsplay comes packed with a basic interface that on each start-up will offer users the chance to define an account name, but with no options for a picture or avatar, which children might miss. Its clean interface features large, embossed buttons for each activity and users will have no trouble in selecting their game.

Although the interface is user-friendly, the game selection buttons have a quite basic, unfinished design, with rough edges and might not be so appealing for children. The name of each game is displayed only when hovering the mouse over their respective buttons and provides a strange difficulty indicator, that could confuse users.

When running the application, users can sometimes experience sluggish behavior, especially when playing the classic arcade games provided. The internal help menus are quite basic and, as with the other written content, aren’t that user-friendly as they should be for children. The application can only be closed from its internal “quit” buttons and users don’t have access to any settings.

The featured games come with no settings whatsoever and obscure information about acceding to different levels or difficulties and users will only benefit from a handful of levels. On our tests, one of the games didn’t function at all, and others caused the application to display error messages, fact which could have a negative impact on children's game experience.

Childsplay will offer users a fair collection of memory, sound recognition, puzzles and classic arcade games that could suffice for those who require a basic child learning platform. Although aimed at children, the application offers a sketchy design that will not be appreciated for its design or its awkward features. Children could be bothered by the “sharp”, unfinished looks of the menus / buttons and might want additional features, such as an avatar, smoother and larger fonts or a better action feedback.