Halloween hilarity, delivered with plenty of well-timed interactive surprises and repeated warnings not to go any further.
After opting to read the chatty text silently or take the ride with a thoroughly sugar-rushed child narrator, the touch of a candy-corn arrow brings up a new screen with a masked cartoon lad who dubs himself “Candy Corn Man” and cautions readers to stop now or have their pants scared off. A tappable stick figure labeled “you” proceeds to demonstrate with a shocked scream. Similarly lively consequences of continuing on range from touch-activated showers of “gross slimy monster eyeballs”—meatballs that fall with messy, red splashes of sauce— to glimpses of an eerie witch and a drifting ghost. Cockroaches skitter toward the closest fingertip, and, finally, a grunting, shadowed hulk is revealed, with the flip of a light switch, to be a Yorkie dressed as Frankenstein’s monster. Though not so much a “story” as a series of gags and set pieces, the frequent use of sequentially appearing elements in the cartoon and photo-collage pictures creates the feel of a video, and, aside from a not-very-relevant blank screen with a single-color chalk “paintbrush,” the wide variety of different sound and animated effects ensures that there’s nary a dull moment.
By and large a treat, well stocked with tricks from the software designer’s toolkit. (iPad holiday app. 6-8)
