App Review: Easter Hunt

I was recently provided with an opportunity to review an app designed for iPad and iPhone.  The app is called Easter Hunt.  It's an app that seeks to combine the fun of an Easter Egg hunt with the Easter story.  In this app, children can search a colorful springtime theme for hidden Easter eggs.  Once the egg is found you need to perform a certain task to crack the egg to reveal a portion of the Easter Story.

Let me start off by saying that I like the overall concept of this app.  It combines the secular fun of Easter with it's true meaning.  In theory, this app should be a winner.  In actual practice I feel the app needs some more work to be executed well.

Since I have both an iPhone and an iPad I tried Easter Hunt out on both devices.  On the iPhone the screens that contained the Easter story had poor rendering.  What I mean by this is as you scroll through the text you would get flashes of light and breaks in the text and background.  This problem did not exist when  I read the text on the iPad.  One thing that frustrated me, my children and my husband as we tested out this app was how slow it was.  The app is slow and unresponsive.  By the time your child gets the gratification of finding the egg they will likely be bored.  If they're not, the act of cracking the egg to reveal the next part of the Easter story will likely frustrate them.  Some eggs crack easily the third time you perform the action (that's a perfect example of the app's unresponsiveness) and other's require a specific action to crack the egg.  Since it takes about 30 seconds for the instructions to slowly scroll across the bottom of the screen, little ones will be frustrated before they know what they're supposed to do.

The story/devotional portion of the app seems a bit too long winded for young children.  I have been teaching religious ed for a few years now and they respond best when you get to the point quickly and in a way that captivates them.  The devotionals in this app aren't going to grasp their attention in most cases.  My own kids, who eagerly drink in the daily readings we do from our children's bible during Lent for our Jesus tree were ready to move on after the first few lines of text.

My husband who is a IT architect by profession, and who also dabbles in app development as a hobby,  felt that the app wasn't intuitive.  He feels the poor rendering and unresponsiveness give the impression of poor memory management.

While I like the overall concept of the app, I cannot in good conscience recommend it.  If the current issues with the app's slow response time were resolved along with a revision of the devotional portion I would be more inclined to suggest this app to others.

I was provided with a free download of this app by it's creator, Square Smith, in exchange for my honest review.