App Review: Sneaky Sam - Interactive Storybook About a Mischievous Boy

Sneaky Sam – Interactive Storybook About a Mischievous Boy

Posted on August 21, 2012

Sneaky Sam is an interactive storybook app that tells the story of a mischievous boy named Sam and his antics. With this app, your children will be seeing quirky and colorful visuals supported by well-made narration, music, and sound effects. There are also mini games that will definitely entice your children to spend countless hours with Sneaky Sam.

Details

Sneaky Sam is an interactive storybook app about a mischievous little boy named Sam and his antics with his dog named Max. The app tells the story of Sam who is a bit sneaky and naughty but at the end of the day is a good kid who wants to be loved.

This story is told through storybook pages with fun interactive elements. Each page contains a full screen illustration with animation and story text that is told by a narrator. The text features karaoke-style highlighting of the words being read so children can read together with the narrator. After each page is read, there are still some more interactive elements waiting to be discovered by your child. These unlock extra animation and/or funny sound effects that children will surely enjoy.

When they are done with the story, the app also has some mini games to have fun with. These games include “Matching Pairs” which is a variation of the memory game, “Find Sam” wherein the user needs to find where in the room Sam is hiding, and “Stickers” where children can practice their creativity by decorating the page with stickers of different things, characters, and elements from the story.

What iHeartThisApp Liked

Sneaky Sam’s layout and controls are similar to most interactive storybooks so children will not have a hard time figuring out how to use it. The app employs a colorful and quirky art style with almost a collage-type feel to the visuals. I personally like this style because it gives the app that unique look while at the same time, it gives children the chance to expand their visual library while they search for their creative voice.

The visuals are supported well with clear and well-acted voice-over narration. The sound effects and music also support the theme and story well. It should also be noted that there is an option to turn off the narration for more advanced readers or for parents who want to read to their children.

It’s great that apart from the story, the developers have taken the time to provide users with some mini games. These mini games raises the replayability of the app and provides children with more hours of learning while having fun.

Suggested Enhancement

Even though it has forward and back buttons on every story book page, I still think that it would be beneficial to the app if the developers included a table of contents for users to be able to jump to their favorite pages anytime.