Alph and Betty’s Topsy Turvy World App

Alph and Betty’s Topsy Turvy World is the first in a series of motion adventure books for iPad from Stephen Cavalier, the author of The World History of Animation.  Alph and Betty was created by Electric Circus, an award winning team of writers, animators, artists, actors and programmers with experience ranging from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Beano, award winning online and console games and Doctor Who.

The series revolves around Alph and Betty, a rather unconventional old couple who live in a ramshackle house full of their inventions and unfinished projects where there’s always something new and exciting to find.  Embedded in the pages of the story is a mini platform adventure with simple puzzles and over thirty fun mini-games based on aspects of the national curriculum for literacy Key Stage One, including letter recognition, phonemes, rhyme and alliteration.

In this app,you can choose Read to Me or Read it Myself.  The animation and music are very beautifully illustrated, crazy and fun!  It is a very interesting unique reading experience for pre-school children.

For first time users, I would suggest choosing Read to Me. My 6 year old son found it hard to solve the rooms puzzles to progress to the next letter. We had to used the ‘?’ button to prompt us what to do next. For each letter, there are mini games hidden inside the alarm clock, letter recognition and quizzes to solve like turn off the tap, pouring magic potions etc. We got stuck on the letter E for a while until we realised that we had to literally turn the iPad around to move onto letter F! After letter G, it seems like we have to wake Alph! Alph has to use the shrinking formula to shrink all the stuff back to normal size and to look for Betty to complete this first episode. We have managed to complete it all and looking forward to playing episodes 2 and 3 which are coming soon.

There is a Play Last Game button which you can always come back and complete the last played level again. This game is very quirky and with over 200 objects to find!  Both of my children find it interesting but they both require a lot of help from adults. This app is great for learning and problem solving. Alph and Betty’s Topsy Turvy World is available on iTunes at £1.99: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/alph-bettys-topsy-turvy-world/id779519807

Disclosure: We have received free code for the purposes of writing this review, however, all thoughts and opinions remain our own.