Baby Panda World - BabyBus

App Review

This review of Baby Panda World was completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 20 April 2021.

About the app

This section contains details about the app provided by an ACCM Reviewer.

ACCM review

This review of Baby Panda World contains the following information:

• The level to which the game was reviewed
• App description
• Reviewers comments
• In App purchasing
• Online information
• Gambling
• Advertising and product placement
• Gender stereotypes and sexual references
• Coarse language
• Game playing behaviour which may be of concern to some parents
• Other

The level to which the game was reviewed

The game was played over several days.

App description

Baby Panda World is an educational app with a focus on basic literacy and numeracy skills, through listening, comprehension, sorting, recognising simple patterns and identifying shapes. The App is divided into 6 main categories: Art, Career, Food, Nature, Habits and Safety. Each category offers various activities and tasks that are visually appealing and colourful and range in learning from identification and recognition of objects, shapes of different sizes, colours, patterns and numbers, to pairing, matching and sorting.

The player has the opportunity to participate in hundreds of games, such as: learning and creating Chinese recipes; renovating an amusement park; learning about the weather by growing sunflowers; caring for animals by using a drone to locate sick animals; and learning about First Aid.

The app contains no written instructions and no reading is required – the instructions are verbal and visual.

The games all focus on practising fine motor skills by sliding, tapping, swiping, dragging, pressing and moving fingers across the screen. The player gets as many attempts as needed to complete the task and is rewarded with confetti or a badge once completed. Each game requires downloading and then is saved in a section that the player can revisit time and time again.

Reviewers comments

Baby Panda World allows children to explore, learn and be immersed in a range of activities or tasks that relate to situations that might be encountered in the real world. All the games are based around engaging animations of Baby Panda and friends. Players are given the opportunity to complete tasks in a highly visual and interactive way. There are clear verbal explanations of the task required at the beginning of each game. This emphasises listening skills and following instructions. There are visual cues throughout all of the games which assist the players if they are having difficulty. This can help players to develop their visual and auditory perception skills. There is also a defined sound when players have identified or incorrectly identified the objects throughout the games.

The game also offers a Literacy focus through interactive guided learning. One example is investigating a penguin. The player learns all about where a penguin lives, what it looks like, how they keep warm, what they eat, and how they avoid predators. This is all interactive while teaching comprehension.

Additionally, this app also includes a number of ‘real-life’ informative videos to watch. For example, “What to do in a rest room” and “Let’s brush our teeth”.

Some initial assistance may be required in order to explain and familiarise players with the games as they are all quite different from one another.

The majority of games are free, however, a paid subscription is needed to unlock added features. Without a subscription, there are regular advertisements throughout the games and these are not always age appropriate.

Settings are accessed via a mathematical multiplication task to prevent changes from very young users (although there is a chance the player could guess the correct answer and therefore enter the settings).

There is also a handy day/night icon to adjust the screen background.

In App purchasing

There is In-App purchasing in this game, examples include:

• You can pay for a subscription. The subscriptions offered are an Annual Subscription ($25.99) & 7 day free trial or Monthly Subscription ($4.99) & 3 day free trial. A subscription will unlock extra games and give you unlimited access, no advertisements, member-exclusive content, and you can cancel anytime.

Other ‘In app-purchases’ are not purchases as such as they are free of cost ‘extensions’. They require solving a maths problem to get to the app store.

Online information

There is some online connectivity, such as:

• Online access is required to download each game.

It is not necessary to create an account, provide any personal details, or connect with social media in order to play the game. There is no connectivity with social media or interaction with other users.

Gambling

At the time of review, the reviewer found no simulated gambling content. If you discover simulated gambling content in this app, please contact us with the details so we can update our review.

Advertising and product placement

There is advertising in this game, including:

• After you download each game there is an advertisement.
• During each game there were at least two advertisements.
• Once each game was completed there was an advertisement.

There are many ads throughout playing this game. These ads were not age appropriate for children.

Gender stereotypes and sexual references

None noted.

Coarse language

None noted.

Game playing behaviour which may be of concern to some parents

None noted.

Other

N/A.

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