3D Bears is an Android and iOS children’s game aimed at toddlers (18 months – 2.5 years) which has you dressing a family of bears up and then watching them dance. StormCellar Inc. underwhelms with this title as there are only two modes to this game: Dressing and dancing… The dancing bits are boring and can be LOST. There are both good and bad points to this game, so read on.
Toddlers have a hard time with games with rules, and any game marketed at toddlers with any element of losing is going to end in tears and frustration. Mind you, the mechanic (simply not touching the screen until an indicator tells you that you need to touch the screen now) is very simple and can be mastered easily. The indicator is not clear in what it is telling you, (it is a traffic light on which green means don’t touch and red means touch,) and I, with my adult sensibilities, needed to actually go to their website to understand what was going on. I think that if your perceptive toddler has the right temperament and some patience she could figure it out without the aid of such research, but I’m not sure why this mechanic is in the game at all. The entire screen turns into a big Lose button while the bear dances around.
That isn’t to say that the dancing sequences are all bad. The animations on the characters are fluid and it is easy to tell what they are supposed to be doing. A person could even mimic the dances, which are based on actual dance moves. It’s a shame that the touch-screen functionality ruins what could be an enjoyable visualization after the bears have been dressed by your toddler.
More robust is the dress-up screen. Here is where the game will shine in the hands of young children. Selecting the wardrobe for the characters is very simple: On a vertical slider you simply select which slot you would like to customize and then choose the specific item from another vertical slider that pops up. It’s fluid, quick and intuitive, as the entire game should have been.
There are three bears taking familiar familial roles to choose from: Father, Sister, And Baby. They are unnamed but never-the-less they have their own unique personalities represented by their wardrobe and dance style. The father bear is a tapdancer, his dance is endearing and simple. He has the most item slots for his wardrobe and as such is the most fun to dress up. The sister has a ballet motif and varied dresses and shoes to choose from. She has a bracelet slot with too many items to make the tiny visualization useful. On an iPad or a high resolution Android it would be most useful, since the resolution is higher than my 3GS (on which this review is based) but if you have a phone like mine, the bracelets are simply too small to see. The baby bear is actually my favourite, since he has this B-Boy outfit and breakdances as part of his routine. I took more glee than is probably sane for a grown man to take from hunting out the sideways hat, the baseball jersey, and sticking a green soother in his mouth to watch him handspin around his crib.
The options and settings are as minimal as can be. The only option which can be selected is the tempo of the song which plays during the dancing sequence. It’s better than nothing, but it’s a misnomer to call that an options or settings screen, since that implies a plurality.
The trailer shows children dancing in a curtain which shows up in the game as in-game graphics, insinuating that there is some kind of camera integration and functionality in that regard. There is not any kind of functionality like this, the trailer is simply attempting to show that children can have fun with the game.
All in all, 3D Bears (available on Android and iOS) is worth the $0.99 pricetag and, despite its flaws, could be enjoyed by the intended age group for at least a little while.
