It’s Spring Again is more accurately described as an app, or an interactive storybook, than a game. In it, a gentle female voice narrates the transitioning of the seasons throughout the year to educate young children about the passing of seasons and what that means.
It all starts off when we are told that the sun is hiding behind the clouds, and you must find it. You do this by utilizing the touchscreen to select and drag the clouds out of the way. The sun comes out, and you must click on it to get it to shine and move on to the next screen. Once the sun has settled over the land, the gentle voice tells us that the sun is waking up the earth and plants, which prompts us to touch the trees and the ground to get the flowers to bloom. This is pretty much how we interact with the world, following the voice prompts and watching as the sun and clouds work their magic on the flora.
Each season has its own special weird creature that almost resembles something found in the real world, but not quite. There is a certain color scheme associated with each season, and each press of our finger on the corresponding object prompts a beautiful bit of music to let us know that our touch has been successful.
While the “game” isn’t very long (it takes all of about ten minutes to cycle through the seasons), there was actually a small bug that I noticed. When pressing on leaves during fall to change the color from green to red or yellow, one of the leaves (pictured above), wouldn’t change for me. I needed to go back to the menu to start over. I was very grateful for the short amount of time that it took to get back, but it was still frustrating that there was such a small bug in such a short game.
The visuals and audio design are fantastic. All of the various examples of the seasons and the sun had a fun and colorful design, and the sounds were gentle and playful. The game is designed to be a vehicle to teach very young children about the seasons, and I felt that it does exactly that in a sufficient manner. You can’t really judge it as a complete game when it has a very specific purpose, and it achieves that pretty well. I will, however, judge it on the fact that it has a game-breaking bug with so little content. Another nice touch for youngsters is that there is a help option in the menu that activates a little hand which points at any spots that have yet to be touched to progress the story, but unless this is activated by an adult, it seems almost pointless. To get to the option in the menu, a child would have to know how to read, but most children that are able to read would be able to recognize the missed spot that the helping hand brings your attention to. Once you’ve worked your way through the seasons, the game simply loops around to Spring Again and will play on as long as your little one remains interested.
Overall, It’s Spring Again is a cheap and delightful way to teach very young children about the seasons in a familiar way. It reminds me a lot of the educational apps that were designed for early versions of the Nook and Kindle Fire Tablets, and would feel right at home on a smartphone or tablet among a bundle of educational materials for preschoolers. The developer did a good job of making this an engaging experience, but I do wish that they had done a better job of bug testing. For less than a couple of dollars, it isn’t a bad deal if you have little ones. Otherwise, it is an easy pass.
