Merry Cubes

by Igromatic

As a young girl I spent hours attempting to master the rubix cube with little to no luck, other than cheating and peeling the stickers off.   Who knew that my rubix cube days would come back to me with the use of a mobile device.  Recently the developers of Igromatic launched in the App Store, Merry Cubes.  It is designed for all Apple devices running iOS 4.0 or later.  Merry Cubes will introduce you to six well accessorized and musically inclined pieces of fruit.  Character introductions will be completed in the form of puzzle building, problem solving, and manipulating as your little one puts their fine motor skills to the test.  It is intended for children ages 2-7, however, Applicable2U has to say, I was hooked as well.

Since this application is designed for a younger population, it is quite obvious that developers took a clean and simple design approach. Users can easily navigate the Merry Cubes of fruit with little to no adult supervision.  There are no in app purchases or advertisements of any kind, just dancing fruit. Applicable2U wouldn’t be surprised if you happened to see your little one “getting down” with their new friends as they are building.  Regardless of which level of play you choose, easy or hard, Merry Cubes flashy fruits will be broken into 4 (easy) or 9 (hard) pieces.  Upon entering either level, users will see two key items: a scrambled up fruit and  a shadow icon bar of each fruit at the bottom of the screen.  This is your success indicator.  In addition, users might find it useful to also take note of the question mark in the upper right hand corner.  The question mark icon is visual tutorial of how to manipulate puzzle pieces.  A note to the developers – might it be possible to add in an option to practice those manipulation moves required (scroll up, scroll down, and turning) prior to game play?  With its 3D appearance, cubes spin around, players can choose which fruit to build in any particular order.  Like a rubix cube, Merry Cubes doesn’t have a set location for where colors/fruits should go.  It is literally a hands on game that doesn’t time those playing and the only frustration they may encounter is which direction should they go next?  As fruit puzzles are put together see your success indicator come to life.

At the completion of all six fruity cubes, players will move from hand manipulation to full body movement as they suddenly feel a need to dance.  Your little one will be pleasantly surprised with the Merry Cubes unexpected animation.  In a future update, it might be interesting if players had the ability to use those manipulating skills they used during “play” mode to actually move the animated fruit on their own.  Overall, Applicable2U enjoyed exploring Merry Cubes and looks forward to sharing with my little man.  To keep friends returning, Applicable2U would love to see more objects to build.   If you would like to learn more about Mobile Igromatic and their other educational apps available, please visit their website here.  To get your groove on today with those of Merry Cubes, click here to access and download to your iTunes library here.