Review - Kids Jigsaw Puzzle (Android phones)

As any parent will tell you, it's vital that babies and toddlers are given toys that improve their hand-to-eye coordination and manual dexterity, which is why jigsaws are so good, because along with those essential skills they also improve pattern recognition and problem solving. Add in jigsaws with the alphabet or numbers on them and suddenly this very simply puzzle concept can teach a young child a lot of different things. There is just one, teeny, tiny, massive problem: babies and toddlers are brilliant at losing and chewing things, which makes most jigsaws rather vulnerable. Thankfully, video game jigsaws can help in this regard.

When it comes to jigsaws puzzle games, the idea does not translate very well to traditional controllers. Even using a mouse on a PC is a bit too detached from the real thing. However, just about everyone over the age of 12 now has a touchscreen smart phone in their pocket, most likely running Apple's iOS system or Google's Android system. Touchscreens do a much better job of recreating the tactile feel of real jigsaws and it's no surprise that app stores on all smart phones are bulging with jigsaw games. If I'm honest, it's a difficult one to get wrong, but at the same time you don't want to be downloading loads of these things to find out which is best, especially when there are a few with unscrupulous sales models in the form of micro-transactions.

Enter Kids Jigsaw Puzzle (which appears on the menus as Yo Puzzle). This simple little game is free (with ad support), includes a host of built-in puzzles and can also make jigsaws from photos in your phone's album. As you lock pieces together they make a satifying clunk and on completion of a puzzle you get the choice to save the picture or even set it as your phone's wallpaper (as my 2½ year-old daughter did on my wife's HTC Desire). The controls are very accurate and it is even good at detecting which, among a stack of pieces, you actually want to move. It's not all positive, though. The game changes and style and number of pieces at random, which means some children may get stuck after just a handful of puzzles. It would have been nicer to set these from a menu, but there you go. My only other criticism is that it can be a bit buggy. A prime example is with the Favourites. Once you've played through them all the game can be prone to getting stuck and moaning that there's nothing else to load, rather than looping back to the beginning or quitting. But these are minor gripes, especially in light of the price.

Verdict 

Kids Jigsaw Puzzle is precisely what it says it is. It's simple, accessible and free. My daughter will happily sit in doctor's waiting rooms or in the seat of a super market trolley clicking together puzzle after puzzle. The ability to use your own photos means enterprising parents could add more educational images, should they desire, safe in the knowledge that individual pieces won't get lost.

Android owners can download the game from the Google Play Store here.

Recommended age: 2½ - 5 years