This Book Is About To Explode is an interesting interactive storybook with fun puzzle elements that children and their adults will enjoy.

This fun sci-fi story centers around Tiki-Zin3, a robot whose job is to search for alien life – ironic because mischievous aliens, in the interest of making their existence known, explode bombs which send Tiki-Zin3 to different locations out into space. Although this character expresses displeasure about being blown to different locations, I am glad to see that the enjoyment children experience from pressing the button to explore the scenes from this book is not a set-up to be terribly sadistic as Tiki-Zin3 makes comments such as not having the time to take a vacation within the place he has just landed, keeping this story light and fun without making children feel too bad for causing these explosions.

This is a creative book with an interesting point-of-view as readers themselves are given the task of blowing up the bombs used by the aliens, first by solving a puzzle to allow detonation and then completing a fun, sometimes challenging memory game where players need to place the details found in every scene back to their rightful places.

Nine scenes are included with a varied degree of difficulty, and I admire the number of hints given within this app, as arrows point to the hotspots where objects need to be placed, also showing players the correct location of an object if one makes a mistake as well as an image of the landscape before the explosion.

I am also very happy to announce that the developer of this app has a “hints” page on his website – very helpful to players who may have difficulty solving the puzzles needed to gain access to the explosives. I wish other developers with puzzle apps or other challenging games would follow this lead to help serve their customers.

The look of this app is also intriguing with a nice use of bold, bright and truly vibrant colors that really pop against the dark background of space, also including nicely stylized illustrations with a vague 1980’s flair that I enjoy.

The only thing I would change is the nearly script font used, which is difficult to read for my taste – even with the larger screen of the iPad. This, combined with the fun yet robotic voice of This Book Is About To Explode, could make this story difficult for children to follow.

Even with this note, This Book Is About To Explode is a unique and inventive storybook with a nice level of content in terms of both puzzles to solve and memory games to complete. The number of hints included within This Book Is About To Explode is admirable as are the bright, fun illustrations. To access the “Hints” section of the developer’s site, please follow the link from iTunes to the developer’s website.

Art, By Age Range, By App Feature, Creativity, Just For Fun, Preschool, Primary School, Puzzle, Reviews