Good for Review; Better Instructions

Once you get into it the actual gameplay is great, and its a fun review for French quizzes, especially since you can select the lessons you would like to use (once you buy the full version). I dont know how useful it would be for someone with no history in the language, but its great practice of youre currently taking a French class or if youre trying to refresh your memory.

Its also fantastic in that it throws in a few of the old "mastered" terms every so often so that you dont just move onto the next lesson, forgetting all of the past vocabulary in the process.

However, some of the lessons dont allow for the best gameplay. The balloon game is more difficult once the terms become phrases rather than words. The phrases take up more room by default so less balloons fit on a screen. My eyesight is fairly good, so I would rather have smaller text to keep the balloon size standard or at least closer to standard than to let the balloons get that big. Also the way the penguin slider game breaks up words can be annoying, like - de ce mb re - is much more difficult to try to piece together than a phrase divided by word like - nous sommes le 5 novembre - or a word divided by letter - b l a n c. That problem may just be me, so Id take it with a grain of salt. I dont know how realistic fixes for those issues would be, but you come to work around them (like selecting a lesson that works better for a certain game to satisfy a quest).

Another issue, one that really needs fixing, is a lack of proper instructions. You are given a screen with a "sample" gameplay, but there are certain aspects to games that you wont learn about until you play through. If this were just any standard game a lack of instructions would be mildly irritating at the beginning but would quickly be overcome. What is crucial to consider is that this game is meant to quiz on vocabulary of a foreign language. Trying to figure out gameplay and vocabulary at the same time is much more difficult than necessary. A full set of instructions for each game should be included in the games loading screen. For those who know how to play, they should put a "skip" option in so that it just goes directly to the game. So many other games do this already so thats a missing feature.

Overall its alright for review, but Id really like to see better instructions.

MushroomWar about Learn French by MindSnacks