If Pokemon characters ran off to populate an island, and decided to form a choir, it might look (and sound) a little like My Singing Monsters, a fun and free game for players of all ages.
Despite a couple of technical glitches – and a mandatory Internet connection – it's one of the most intriguing and unique iPad games of the fall to date.
Also available on iPhone and iPod touch, Big Blue Bubble's My Singing Monsters has you breed more than 30 different monsters, place them somewhere on the island and listen as they sing together in unison. Collectively they form a catchy song, be it from a two-headed Venus Flytrap-like creature, a three-eyed frog thing, a skinny tree trunk (who does "beatbox" with his voice) or a booming baritone in the form of a tall, white and furry monster. Kids and kids at heart will likely fall for these charming ditties, which differ per island.
To vary the song, you can also mute certain monsters or position the camera with your fingertip over ones you like best, for their parts to sound louder.
You'll accomplish goals in the game: build structures to increase the happiness of your creatures, breed and hatch certain monsters, build bakeries or remove unwanted items on the island, such as rocks and trees. Performing tasks earns you coins, which you can use to buy items from the virtual store. Some monsters and items require green diamonds, though, which means you need to build a mine to produce diamonds, or you can purchase these precious jewels with real cash via an in-game purchase.
At any time you can tap to randomly visit someone else's My Singing Monsters game to see and hear what they've done with their world – similar to other building games like The Simpsons Tapped Out.
But because the game requires a constant Internet connection for some reason, kids can't play, say, in the back of a car (unless they use cellular data). This was one of my beefs with The Simpsons Tapped Out, as well. And both games suffer from technical glitches; when you launch My Singing Monsters, for example, every other time or so the game won't load and you'll have to exit out of the app and start again to try your luck. It's quite annoying, but the content is so good – especially the more you play and unlock new content – it doesn't take away too much from the overall experience. (Update on Wednesday, Oct. 17: An app update seems to have resolved this issue.)
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