Digital Dream Labs Starter Pack with Free Programming Game: Cork The Volcano

Was so excited to give this to my daughter for Christmas, but upon opening it, encountered too many problems. First, Playtray needs an update. Ok, fair enough. Download app to my iOS 10.11.6 & it won't connect to the internet. Restarted app. Same thing. Restarted computer. Same thing. Looked at the app reviews in Apple App Store & the previous reviewer had the same thing. Digital Dream Labs had replied with a comment that included a link to where the firmware is available for download directly from their website. Clicked on link. Link takes me to the page that gives instructions on how to download app & some basic troubleshooting. None of which worked. Can't use Playtray without update. Can't update Playtray with faulty app. Wish I could actually give the product a review, but I can't use the product.

As a mom, I have to say it has been an absolute dream watching my children play with the game and actually cooperate versus fighting over the iPad! I think they are actually learning something versus using a toy to pacify them. I'm not a techie, but the quality of the game is far superior to that of LeapFrog or other knock off products that are out there. The board has a nice look to it and the game has a rich feel and design. I get tired of the violent games that are out there that want our children to grow up too fast.From the kid perspective, the puzzle pieces are small so we keep it out of the one year old hands, but our four year old enjoys putting the pieces in the tray as much as our older children who love the game. It seems six to eight years old is the most appropriate age for this game. I see this as a much better version of Scratch Jr that pulls from the "old school" Nintendo from my generation.I purchased the product from Digital Dream Labs recently via their online pre-sale promotion at $69. We had no tech issues, we have the latest version of iPad Air.

Overall, this is a fun and well-thought out learning tool and game.Pros -Physical interface works well and provides a fun interface.Puzzles are well thought out and offer multiple ways to solve and several competing objectivesWhen the tray is working, the game and app work seamlessly.Cons -- The game tray loses power too quickly, and it won't connect while plugged into a power source. The first time, I charged it fully (overnight), then unplugged it and it just sat for 8 hours before I picked it up to play. We got 4 'levels' before the tray battery was drained. The second time, I unplugged it from the power supply just before starting to play. We got about 40 minutes of play before the battery died.- When the tray runs out of power, there is no error message. The app just stops reporting updates from the tray. It's a small, but frustrating, point.- There are multiple level objectives (a "target time", a certain # of water drops to collect, a target number of moves). The target times are nearly impossible to meet, and it's not clear how they're calculated. From the first piece placement? From the opening of the level in the app, from the first tap on the screen to start movement? It's also not clear that it's ok to meet different goals using different methods. For example, if one goal is "5 moves", there may be no way to pick up all the water drops AND use 5 moves or less. You get credit for completing each goal in subsequent "runs", but we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how we could possibly meet every objective in a single "run". This would be easy to address in a tutorial.- The play pieces are slippery and difficult to manipulate for my (rather large) hands. It's a small thing, but a bit of roughness on the edges would help a lot.

My daughter is 9 and working at a grade level above her current grade. I bought this for her for xmas hoping it wouldn't be too easy for her. She is LOVING IT! She looks at the screen, decides how to program the moves then tries out her assumptions, re-evaluates and tries again. She is having a blast doing it and makes sure she gets all the droplets on each level. She is frustrated that you can't program loops and that it seems like they want you to struggle a bit more through the levels because lessons are given at some point in the world that can help you get through some of the levels so it's like they expect you to go back and redo levels after you have learned a skill. Hope that makes sense - she is playing it right now and it's hard to get her attention to explain it to me =)I hope the company is planning on coming up with expansions as we would definitely purchase!