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Devices: iPhone • iPad • Android
Toca Life: School
Toca Life: School is a fun play world where kids can immersive themselves in a pretend school environment, letting their imaginations run wild.
ABOUT
Toca Life: School is part of the expansive Toca Life series of apps from Toca Boca. Like most Toca Boca apps there is the apartment where the players’ character lives and a series of buildings within the city to explore.
In Toca Life: School there are a total of 4 locations related to school life, including the classroom, playground, cafeteria, and youth club. Within each area, kids can interact with countless elements like the basketball court, science experiments, climbing trees, or playing instruments.
Like other Toca Boca apps, players predominately drag-and-drop items throughout the scene to play. Clickable elements throughout are interactive and make each scene more engaging. We love that the Toca Boca series of apps are inclusive, including wheelchairs and prosthetics. Players can customize the characters throughout the game by discovering new outfits and accessories as they explore.
The Toca Boca apps also have a recording feature where kids can record imaginative stories as they play. The max length of the videos is about 2 minutes which we found to be ample time among our playtesters.
Like other Toca Boca apps, there are no in-app purchases or 3rd party advertising. It is also COPPA-compliant making this a safe app for you to allow your child to play unattended.
Wondering if Toca Life: School is free? Unfortunately, it’s not, but at $3.99 the app is well worth the money for a parent looking for a safe space for imaginative play.
SCREENSHOTS
GAME PLAY
Toca Life: School starts with an aerial view of the city. Players can then choose from 5 buildings to enter: their house, the school, the playground, a youth club, or the cafeteria.
Within each location, there are characters and clickable items to interact with throughout. In total there are 34 characters to play with, all of which can be customized with outfits and accessories found throughout gameplay. Exploration is highly encouraged in the game and interacting with items triggers fun results. For example, players can trigger the fire alarm sprinklers and must use the fire extinguisher to make it stop. While this isn’t always intuitive to younger users, once they discover the chain of effects on one item they typically search for other easter eggs throughout.
The food fight in the cafeteria was the favorite among our playtesters and we especially loved that you could clean it up after. We also liked the chemistry experiments in the science lab.
You can record the screen at any time by clicking on the blue record button on the top right of the screen. It does require permission to access the microphone, however, young readers will likely select “OK” on their own. The recording feature works without the microphone but is lacking the narration of the story without it.
REVIEWS
Toca Life: School
- Value
- Privacy
- Educational Value
- Ads
- In-App Purchases
- Editor Rating
4.3
Summary
Toca Life: School is yet another fun app from the Toca Boca series. While there is no educational value to the app, we love the immersive and imaginative experience it provides for young kids. We especially love that they can record their own stories, allowing kids to share their creations with family.
Pros
Safe
No in-app purchases
Imaginitive
Cons
Limited content
Sending
