Maze Plus: iPad App That is Almost Perfect

Why bother to give you kids mazes? Obviously, kids develop better spatial skills by working through a maze. But really. So what? I looked into this because I have been hitting mazes hard with my kids, if for no other reason that I was/am terrible at them. So I wanted to justify the educational value of mazes.

First, the studies seem clear that there is a relationship between motor development and spatial cognition. So that alone should get you into mazes. There is a also great predictive data on all kinds of good things with the Porteus Maze on which there are a lot of studies.. I was so interested I tried to buy these. But for $239? Let’s see what the iPad has.

I have probably 10 different iPad maze games. My favorite is Maze Plus. Maze Plus allow you to literally do the maze, drawing the line from start to finish with your finger that pulls a line behind you. The mazes are cute and fun. “Daddy, how does the pig get to the moon? An air balloon.” My kids really just love the game to the point where they think it is a treat to let them play it.

What stops Maze Plus from being the perfect iPad game? The lack of randomization. If they could just randomize the puzzle from scratch, it would be an amazing game. Before long, the kids remember the way and you really can’t get much out of the mazes anymore. But, still, for $1.99, I can’t recommend this game enough.