How to Play This Puzzle App
Eye-popping multi-colored animals constructed from large geometric shapes greet kids as they start this puzzle. Using contrasting colors, similar in look to Matisse's famous paper cut-outs, the app makes a few of these brilliantly-hued shapes flash, enticing little fingers to touch and move them. When two like-colored shapes collide, the background color of the screen dramatically changes to that color, causing the same-colored shapes to disappear. Kids then move two more shapes together, restarting the process. The object of the puzzle is to remove all of the colors found in the painting by systematically flooding the background with color you want to make disappear.
Solutions Require Kids to Think Ahead
To solve a puzzle, players repeatedly flood the background with new colors so as to peel away the colored pieces on the screen until the remaining pieces match the color of the border. Kids intuitively pick up on bumping shapes together to change the background color. The key to solving each puzzle -- each a different animal -- is to think ahead. If you need to end with a certain color, how do you rid the screen of all the other colored shapes so that you have at least two shapes left that match the border? They learn to study the outlining colors of the shapes and strategize how to leave shapes the color of the border until the end. Each puzzle ends with a dramatic splash of color flowing across the entire screen.
Music Helps Create a Zen-like Environment
Offsetting these vibrant visuals is gentle but upbeat music. Kids will be swaying to the music as they color-fill their way through 100 lively puzzles.
Why This Puzzle App is Good
Color Zen for Kids use of bold and dramatic colors creates a vibrant environment in which to solve puzzles. By requiring kids to study the outlines of the multi-colored shapes, the puzzles put kids' visual acuity to the test. And the process of solving the puzzle -- by repeatedly flooding the scene with color -- is a satisfying and unusual way to solve a puzzle, especially because the color fills as if you spilled a can of paint just outside of the puzzle work area. Capping off the experience is a delightful soundtrack that helps to put you into the thinking zone.
These puzzles are interesting for all children to explore, but will be a favorite to those who enjoy music. If your child focuses best when there is background music, this puzzle app is a perfect fit.
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