App review: ‘GoldieBlox,’ girl-empowering coding game
GoldieBlox: Adventures in Coding - Cupcake Robot Co. (GoldieBlox)
GoldieBlox: Adventures in Coding - Cupcake Robot Co. (GoldieBlox)
Parents need to know that GoldieBlox: Adventures in Coding - Cupcake Robot Co. is a girl-empowering, diverse, STEM-focused game that introduces kids to coding through a story-based adventure. (Common Sense Media/TNS)
Parents need to know that GoldieBlox: Adventures in Coding — Cupcake Robot Co. is a girl-empowering, diverse, STEM-focused game that introduces kids to coding through a story-based adventure. It’s made by the bigger Goldieblox brand that also offers STEM toys marketed to girls. While the coding adventure is the main focus of the game, it also features mini-games and a sandbox-style puzzle as well as several videos featuring girls being strong and smart. The video content changes regularly, and all of the content is included in the one-time purchase price. There’s no violence, but kids do use a gun-shaped blaster to move obstacles out of the path. No personal information is required to play, and the easy-to-read privacy policy outlines the information that is collected.
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Goldie and her friends have a problem — they wrote “birthday” on the calendar but don’t know whose birthday it is. They solve the problem in Goldieblox: Adventures in Coding — The Rocket Cupcake Co. by making cupcakes for everyone and delivering them around town using a rocket-powered skateboard until they find the party. Kids play mini-games to gather ingredients and make the cupcakes and programming the paths using visual code blocks. Each level adds to the adventure, and kids can watch videos or customize coding puzzles.
IS IT ANY GOOD?
Diverse and curious group of friends show just how cool coding and engineering can be in a story-based adventure that will appeal especially to girls. The coding portion of Goldieblox: Adventures in Coding — The Rocket Cupcake Co. is pretty run-of-the-mill as far as visual coding games go. Kids can replay to fix mistakes or get help from Ruby Rail’s notes (a character who is a nice nod to MIT’s Ruby on Rails programming language), but more specific hints about various obstacles would help kids through sticky frustration. The mini-games develop spatial reasoning and tie in to the story’s theme. It’s the sandbox and Goldie TV that really stand out, though, inspiring creativity and design-thinking without restrictive stereotypes.
RATING AND CONTENT
Recommended for ages 7 and older
Quality: 4 out of 5
Learning: 4 out of 5
Ease of play: 4 out of 5
Violence and scariness: 0 out of 5
Sexy stuff: 0 out of 5
Language: 0 out of 5
Drinking, drugs, and smoking: 0 out of 5
Consumerism: 1 out of 5 (Are products/advertisements embedded? Is the title part of a broader marketing initiative/empire? Is the intent to sell things to kids?)
WHAT KIDS CAN LEARN
- Language and reading
- Science
- Hobbies
- Thinking and reasoning
- Creativity
- Self-direction
- Emotional development
- Tech skills
APP DETAILS
Devices: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad
Price: $2.99
Release date: August 2, 2016
Category: Education
Publisher: GoldieBlox
Minimum software requirements: iOS 7.0 or later
