Spelling Super Star

Gameplay

In this educational game children learn how to spell by trial and error. They are presented with a hand drawn picture that depicts the word they need to spell. Spelling of course is done by tapping an on-screen keyboard. Everytime a word is spelled correctly points are awarded and the next picture comes up. Children have 120 seconds to get as many words correct as they can before time runs out.

There are 15 categories of words, ranging from jobs and food to numbers and vegetables. All in all this game has over 800 words. So there’s plenty of vocabulary to be learned with Spelling Super Star.

Children can play by themselves on easy, medium or hard difficulty. If they don’t know the word they’re supposed to spell, they can tap on the hand drawn picture to hear the word.

Mission Accomplished

All of the hand drawn graphics in this Spelling Super Star are really great. Not to mention that children can also play in two player mode, where they compete with each other to see who can get the most points by spelling correctly.

Also, everytime 10 words are spelled correctly, a rocket is launched that releases bonus stars which children can grab to gain extra points and playing time.

Through the options screen of this game, children can also select their desired background art and keyboard color.

Room to improve

The keyboard for the one player mode is a standard QWERTY keyboard, while the keyboard for two player mode is an ABCDEFG keyboard. This can be kind of confusing if you’re switching between the two playing modes.

The keyboard layout is ABCDEFG to make it fair for players that don’t know the keyboard layout already.

Also in two player mode there is no home button like there is in the one player mode. This means that children have to wait for the game to end before returning home. Maybe there’s a good reason behind this, such as keeping kids from ending a two player game as a way to cheat.  The home button was in fact removed so that players can’t end the game early.

Conclusion

If your kid is learning how to spell, they’re in elementary school, or they are ESL students, then this is an app worth purchasing.  For $.99 it has a lot of vocab and features. It’s no surprise then that Spelling Super Star is rated an average of 4 1/2 stars on the App Store.