Sounds of the Animal Kingdom is an educational Windows Phone game designed to use sounds and animations to teach children about animals.
Sounds of the Animal Kingdom has a simple interface that is well designed for children to navigate around and plenty of opportunities for parent/child interaction. It may not be a Windows Phone game suited for everyone but I can see it being a fun educational game for childhood development but also an entertaining way for them to pass the time.
The main menu for Sounds of the Animal Kingdom includes access to the four animal categories, a link to rate the app in the Windows Phone Store, choose your language support (covers ten) and an in-app purchase to remove the ad support ($.99).
The four categories of animal sounds include:
- Domestic Animals: This will include your dog, cat, horse, cow, chicken, goat, pig, sheep, donkey and bull sounds.
- Wildlife Animals: Here you will find tiger, elephant, lion, deer, bear, zebra, monkey, rhinoceros, kangaroo and rabbit sounds.
- Birds: This category covers peacock, parrot, pigeon, kingfisher, owl, crow, sparrow, nightingale, swan and flamingo sounds.
- Aquatic Animals: This category covers animals that prefer life by or in the water and includes dolphin, shark, frog, turtle, crocodile, hippopotamus, duck, seal, walrus and duckbill platypus sounds.
The interface for each animal sound is consistent throughout the app. Just tap on a thumbnail of the animal you want to listen to and then tap the animal's picture to initiate the sound.
A voice will identify the animal, a short animation will play and then a short audio clip will run for that animal. For example for the duck, you would hear "Duck" then "quack, quack, quack".
You can also tap the Play Button to cycle through the thumbnails and the sounds will play automatically as the animal image is pulled up.
Ad support for Sounds of the Animal Kingdom comes in the form of those pesky full-screen ads. Fortunately, they only pop-up at random intervals but you still have to top the "X" button to close the ad and return to the app. This may be challenging for our younger Windows Phone users. I'm not sure this is an app to turn over to your toddler without keeping an eye on things. I can see them missing the "X" button and venture into advertising websites.
Overall Impression
Sounds of the Animal Kingdom is an educational Windows Phone game that has potential. The app definitely covers a wide range of animal sounds to help your child associate sounds and images with domestic and wild animals.
The announcement of the animal name is a little on the shaky side and is not as clear as I would like. There are also a few head scratchers present with a few of the animal's sounds. For example, the sound associated with the shark is a chomping sound, which may be a bit of a reach.
While the app has some room for improvement, as is Sounds of the Animal Kingdom does a nice job of things. So far, the Windows Phone app is rated at 5 stars in the Store and we would place it slightly lower in the 4 star range.
If you try Sounds of the Animal Kingdom, let us know what you think of the Windows Phone title in the comments below.
Download Sounds of the Animal Kingdom for Windows Phone (Free)
