Hogworld: Gnart's Adventure is an adventure game app for children aged 4 to 8 years, and it is brilliant. It is effectively an interactive storybook like none we have seen.
Think back to your childhood and all those hours playing games like King's Quest and other predominantly text-driven adventure games. Now imagine those games on a touch screen and with much cleaner graphics than those pixelated warriors we used to control. It is those stories that have inspired this app which integrates gameplay into storytelling better than any other app I have seen to date. I was immersed as I wandered with Gnart, a small hog bunny who has different companions like bees and birds to help him on his way.
This is an app that transforms eBooks with gameplay and quality animation so that it feels like a book and game simultaneously. That is quite an achievement! Often you sense that the app is either a book nor a game, and that an alternative has been added. This is something different: I can't quite put my finger on it, but the narrative reads like a story, and the scenes look like pages from a book. Even so, you feel like you have control over Gnart just like you would in any good roleplaying computer game. The reason this stands out is that the interactivity isn't there to make the pages move, or to allow a child to color in, the interactivity is there to help drive the plot! This is something eBook publishers have in the main not grasped. It makes it feel like a game, but effectively you still have a linear narrative, it is just the reader (or player if you like) feels like they have some control over the destiny of the main character. The developers, Snowcastle Interactive, get it. They are destined for big things.
The goal of Hogworld: Gnart's Adventure is that Gnart needs to get the dentist on the other side of the forest to check out his sore tusks. He has been invited to Millie's birthday party, but can't go because his tusks hurt. The graphics are really high quality – they aren't Moonbot Studio standard (creators of The Fabulous Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, but they are what children would expect from their other screen-based entertainment like television. Plus, while this app doesn't have the same Pixar-esque look as Moonbot Studio's, the fact that it provides immersion through children's ability to control the story and interact with the screen in ways that are active rather than passive puts it above Moonbot in that category. By this I mean: Passive interaction is where you touch the screen and a bird moves. The active interaction in Hogworld is that you touch a bird, it moves, but also opens a door which introduces a new character and a new potential plot line.
When I talk to app developers for children I talk about the importance of the audio and prompts that support children to navigate through an app when they need to be supported. This has both written, verbal and animated prompts throughout the opening scenes that all fit within the aesthetic and feel of the app. It makes the app work for the age range that the story is intended for.
If you haven't heard about Hogworld: Gnart's Adventure before, I'm not surprised. It has only just been developed as an English version, but has been a number #1 selling kids' app in Norway for some time. It should be in Apple's Best Apps for 2011 list and big developers of eBooks should take a look and see what they can learn from this story – it is more than touch points. The interactivity is woven into the plot, making it a real adventure.
You can download Hogworld: Gnart's Adventure from the iTunes Store.
Note: GeekDad received a preview copy of Hogworld: Gnart's Adventure.
