Boca, Toca. Toca Lab: Plants. June 2017. Version 1.1.1. iTunes App Store, https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1225994089?mt=8
Ages: 4-6Price: $2.99Available for Apple, Google Play, and Kindle Fire
Toca Lab: Plants, from developer Toca Boca complements other apps in the Lab series, which aim to make science accessible through play. Toca Lab: Plants provides an open and unstructured environment to both nurture and experiment with plants. Upon opening the app, players enter a lab where a plant bobs happily in in the center, waiting to be played with; the plants are quite friendly and invite the player to interact. Five lab stations offer chances to experiment: a grow light, watering tank, nutrition station, cloning machine, and crossbreeding apparatus. In playing with these lab tools, the player can propagate plants, discover new plants, nurture others in pots, and keep track of them all in a botany chart. The plants, as characters in this app, are endearing. They respond with joy and exuberance to stimuli they like and with fear and shudders at stimuli they dislike. They even giggle and shake their leaves in response to touch.
The lab itself is visually interesting and begs to be explored. Each station has machines to turn on, knobs to crank, faucets to open, or buttons to push. Since the play is wordless and largely without text (species are labelled with their Latin and common names at some points), the sound effects help to clarify what is happening and the materials in use, such as running water or electricity. The graphics are classic Toca Boca: beautiful bold colours, exaggerated blocky shapes, quirky plant characters, and uncluttered scenes. While all these elements – the app’s open play that supports experimentation and discovery, the beautiful visuals, and the endearing plants – make for a compelling play experience initially, the app is limited in extending play beyond these initial encounters.
When compared with the imaginative possibilities in Toca Builders or Toca Blocks, for example, which allow users to create new spaces, scenes, structures, and worlds, Toca Lab: Plants feels limited. Players can only create so many new plants before the species begin to repeat themselves. Similarly, with the experiments, once all the plants have been moved through each experiment, the play is essentially mastered. Other than the plant chart (which is simply compiled as the player plays), there is no opportunity to construct something here, such as a garden or living structure with which to extend the world. Still, the app is beautiful and engaging, invites discovery and experimentation, and provides surprises and excitement as plants grow and change in response to the player’s actions. There is much fun to be had here in Toca Lab: Plants.
Recommended: 3 out of 4 starsReviewer: Katherine Schock
Katherine is a high school English teacher currently working on an MLIS at the University of Alberta. Her passion for children’s literature is kindled daily by her two small children and her much larger students.
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