ABCLearninggames violates a MAJOR RULE for apps geared toward toddlers. After purchasing the upgrade from the free version, you wind up with a home screen that has 10 games and 3 of them are still locked, requiring additional in-app purchases. So 30% of the available games are still off-limits to your 2 year-old, who doesn’t understand why she gets a pop-up window blocking her progress when she pushes that one, and can’t understand why she can’t have it, and cries, and eventually becomes so disgusted with the fact that she can’t open the one that she has become fixated on that she no longer wants to open any part of ABCLearninggames at all. This is super crappy, unprincipled, greed-driven app design. A word of advice to the makers of ABCLearninggames: parents purchase toddler apps so that everything within the game will just open up for our little ones, and we won’t have to explain or distract or apologize. It’s a TODDLER APP, duh. Advice to prospective customers: don’t bother. Any reputable toddler app will absolve you from the frustration of additional in-app purchases after it takes your initial $3.99.
