Children love stories, but that doesn’t mean they have to come out of books. Making up your own adventures can be hugely rewarding as a parent. Not least because it’s an alternative to reading Bob The Builder: Muck Gets Stuck for the 7,468th time.
(Don’t worry, he gets un-stuck eventually. Every single time.)
FableScapes is a new iPhone app that aims to fuel your storytelling creativity. It offers you a choice of settings, characters, animals and objects to place on-screen, then tap to trigger different animations.
It’s a cracking idea, but in its current form doesn’t quite meet up to expectations. Choosing between Pirates and Knights & Wizards isn’t too bad, but for this to really shine, it needs dozens more characters and a bit more control over the animations triggered – right now, they just cycle between a few, rather than letting you choose when they, say, talk or fight.
Oh, and this would be great as a native iPad app, for the bigger screen size. Even so, the developers of FableScapes are onto something: I wouldn’t be surprised to see this kind of idea taken on by the likes of Disney or Nickelodeon to help parents tell their own stories with their characters.
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