Ellie's Games Review

I found Ellie's Games on facebook. Erik Bye had been very generous with A4cwsn , an online special needs community, in providing app codes of Ellie's Games to be given away on their facebook page. He quickly became a community favorite developer. It was not until he guest hosted the A4cwsn page for a day that I got to know his apps better.

About Ellie's Games
My daughter has inspired me to develop child friendly iOS games. Simple intuitive games focusing on the basics: Eye-hand coordination, color recognition and fine motor skills. Every game is throughly tested by our Quality Assurance team (Ellie) and must be approved by our business management team (Ellie).

Ellie's Games has 8 apps to date. I was fortunate enough to win a code for Alphabet Dots during that time and I bought Math Duel to help Anna Grace with math. Ok...really so I could brush up on my basic math skills. I was impressed with several aspects of those two apps, so when Erik posted a request for Bloggers to review his apps, I did not hesitate to volunteer. Erik provided me with codes for Color Dots, Color Squares, Counting Dots and Rain Dots. He also made his newest app Dot Collector free for a limited time in in honor of its release on 2/29/12.  Color Dots is the most popular with 20K+ downloads.

One of the first things I noticed about Ellie's Games is the vibrant color scheme that is used.

What kid wouldn't be engaged by those colors? The simplicity of Ellie's games is another great feature. They are simple enough that any child can use while still reinforcing and teaching core skills such as hand-eye coordination, color recognition, and fine motor skills. With that being said, Ellie's Games are challenging enough for Luke at 5 and Emily(ASD) at 9. Alphabet Dots and Counting Dots have been really helpful for both Emily and Luke.

I let Emily decide which app I would review and she chose Counting Dots. Counting Dots is available in the iTunes store for .99. There are a few choices in settings. You can remove the dot border, pop sound and pop vibrate(on the iPhone). Luke loves using the pop vibrate on my phone. I personally think the border is helpful for Emily when playing Counting Dots on her iPad as is the popping sound. This game is challenging for Emily as she has to focus on counting numbers in sequence. A skill that we are still working on. The iTunes description says it is  "Helping kids count from one to one million!" We personally haven't gotten to a million yet but I take Erik's word for it. When tapping the dots, if you tap an incorrect number, that dot will shake letting the child know it is not correct. When the correct number dot is chosen they get the rewarding popping sound. Once a sequence is achieved a new screen appears with more number dots. No levels awarded or times to beat which is important for Emily's confidence in working on math skills. Overall this is a fantastic app that I give a 5 star rating in iTunes. Here is a short clip of Emily playing Counting Dots.

 Please go "Like" Ellie's Games on Facebook and check out elliesgames.com. I have links to the apps in Itunes below. Please check them out and if you purchase any don't forget to leave a rating and review in iTunes
Counting Dots
Dot Collector
Alphabet Dots
Color Dots
Color Squares
Rain Dots
Color Sliders
Math Duel


Thanks,
Jessica