Bendable Media

I have one rule when it comes to downloading an iPhone game for my kid: It must be free. Now, I know many parents will not download games for their kids, believing that one, having your kid play with your iPhone is a recipe for disaster, or two, video games are addicting and they don’t want to encourage their kids.

I agree with both, but I’m a realist. Hence, I use a hard-cover case on my iPhone (the highly recommended Mophie Juice Pack Air) and I allow my kids to play video games as a reward. Hey, I want to play the games too, so I’d be a hypocrite if I played but didn’t let them.

But there’s one important lesson I’ve learned when it comes to iPhone games: they absolutely must be free. (I have made one exception, which I’ll describe below.)

Why free? My 6-year-old son is a fickle consumer of iPhone games. He loves to browse the App Store for new games because he tends to get bored quickly. That’s the reason we only download free games. Yes, sometimes he gets bored because free games are “lite” versions of paid games. Other times, the games are harder — or easier — than he anticipated.

I let the boy, with my guidance, browse the App Store. He knows how to quickly preview a game app — since his reading skills are not yet equal to his gaming skills, he skips the words and goes straight to the screen shots to see if he’s interested. And, since he understands — and endorses — the free rule, he knows how to tell if a game is free. (He’s tried to convince me of why I should give him my password but his legal skills need some work.)

Here are the current games my son endorses. To make the list, he needed to have played a game at least three times.

SpongeBob Dinner Dash (Lite). SpongeBob’s job is to seat customers at the Krusty Krab, serve them and then handle their bill when done. It’s a coordinated dance and the game frustrated him at first. But once he got into a rhythm and figured out how to manage the flow, he started to enjoy it when the pace quickened. He’s played this game several times and it appears to be his favorite.

Cocoto Kart Free. This is your standard racing game, where you drive a kart around the course and crash into things. You tilt the iPhone to stay in the lanes, a challenge to the boy’s impatient nature. But he’s getting better and actually thinks crashing is fun.

Bug Squash Lite. A great use of the iPhone’s magical touch screen: See a bug scamper across the screen and then squash it with your thumb. See and hear the splat! The bugs can scamper pretty quickly, often requiring two thumbs to keep pace. This one’s fun for the whole family!

Sunday Lawn. Mow the lawn with your finger! If you can manage to keep your finger on the iPhone while you maneuver through turns and avoid shrubs, you get more points. You’re shooting for a continuous cut of the grass and it’s not easy. (Note: this game is now 99 cents. Like everything else, iPhone apps go on sale. We must have picked the right day to download.)

Oh, and the one exception I made when it came to paying for a game, it wasn’t for the boy. Instead, it was for the 2-year-old girl. She was using an ingenious, educational game called FirstWords Sampler that I originally downloaded for the boy.

She loved it, but there are only a handful of words. To play, you slide letters into the right spot in a word. To spell Cat, you move the ‘C’, then the ‘A’ and then the ‘T.’ The letters lock into place when your kid gets them close. The upshot: the First Words app sounds out the letters and then the completed words, giving a young child some early spelling help.

Will my kid be an ace speller because of this? I have no idea, but she loved playing so I figured spending $4.99 for FirstWords Deluxe would be a worthwhile risk.

If you have free game suggestions, please add to the comments below!

This post first appeared on the MyDadN’Me blog.

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