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Toca Kitchen 2 App Review

App Info

Price: $3.99

Overview

Give your kids control of the kitchen with Toca Kitchen 2. In the no rules, stress-free environment, kids get to decide what’s for dinner. Be prepared for some zany concoctions. As kids cook, they can mix a variety of different ingredients to create their own unique meals. Want to make a smoothie with steak and tomato? Add hot sauce to a pear? It’s all possible in the free-range Toca Kitchen and the three patrons in the app are willing to try it all, although their faces will show that they won’t always enjoy it.

Features include:

A fridge full of food
Three characters to feed
Five different kitchen tools
Vegetarian setting

Quality

Quality and Toca Boca go hand in hand and Toca Kitchen 2 doesn’t disappoint. Its characters and graphics feature the same style and feel as many of kids’ other favorite Toca Boca apps. While the app promotes no rules and stress-free play, it could use a few more identifiers to make it easier for kids to use. For example, some kids may have trouble discovering the fridge on the side of the screen or may not recognize some of the tools in the kitchen. Adding a more defined handle for the fridge or placing the grill pan on the burner will help improve the game a bit.

Education

This app is not being rated for education.

Entertainment

Kids can combine any of the ingredients in the fridge and cook them however they want to come up with zany concoctions. They’ll love trying to feed their foods to the characters in the game and see their reactions. To get even better reactions, add a lot of hot sauce or pepper to a dish. Even though kids can combine a lot of different foods, with only five different cooking methods, the game’s play feels a little limited. Once kids have used each of the tools and have cooked with a few different foods, the game starts to loose a bit of its appeal. They may return to it briefly now and again, but it’s not an app that will hold their attention for long periods of time.

Value

Toca Kitchen 2 is worth adding to your collection, particularly if you’re a Toca Boca fan, but if your kids already have other cooking apps on their device, it may not be worth the download. Kids do have a bit more freedom in the kitchen than with some other apps, but overall it has the same feel as many other cooking apps for kids.

Child Friendliness

The app’s settings are contained outside of the app, in Apple’s settings screen. There, parents can opt whether to receive Toca News. They can also select to turn on the vegetarian setting which will only allow kids to cook with fruits and vegetables instead of meat. Parents can also view the in-app parents section which outlines the different tools and highlights the freedom kids have in the Toca kitchen. However, to read the information in the parent section, the device must be connected to the Internet.