App reviews: Slip Away, Mad Libs
Slip Away
Slip Away is a fun, good-looking and quick game that asks you to navigate a jellyfish through a dark and hostile ocean. How hostile? Almost everything you touch in this game will kill you. The good news is that you can always try again. Players are given some pretty basic controls: You tap right to veer right, left to veer left, and more quickly to speed up. Players have to avoid a number of obstacles including spiked walls, crunching barriers and the occasional angler fish. Making your way toward the light, although challenging, is oddly soothing - particularly if you're wearing headphones and can appreciate the game's mood-setting soundtrack.
You can collect gems in the game to buy other colors of jellyfish. The game does have ads, as many free games do, and they come up frequently - particularly if you die a lot. It should be noted that some users online report crashing issues with the latest version of Android; I did not have any problems.
Free, for iOS and Android.
Mad Libs
Remember Mad Libs, the word game that was the staple of the road trip? Well, it's been updated into an app - although the basics of the game remain the same. For those who don't know, Mad Libs asks players to fill in the blanks in pre-written stories. The catch is that you don't know what the sentence says as you're suggesting a word. The out-of-context results, as many of us learned back in the day, can be pretty amusing. On a smartphone, the game can be a little more interactive, as users can get suggestions for how to fill in the blanks. Or, if you're a little rusty on your parts of speech, it will help you sort your adverbs from your adjectives.
The free app includes 21 stories to fill in subjects, objects and various parts of speech. More stories can be bought within the app, and Mad Libs advertises other themed apps. Extra books are $2. The game provides good, clean family fun (unless you plug in words that aren't family-friendly) and is a stealthy way to teach kids the basics of grammar without being too stuffy. Free, for iOS and Android.