Roxie's a-MAZE-ing Vacation Adventure is a ‘seek-and-find’ adventure game with beautiful hand-crafted drawings.  It contains 16 screens where you have to find your way by driving a car, walking, flying, skiing and rafting. The purpose of the game is to find letters, numbers, animals and star fragments while navigating around the various screens.  Each screen consists of five star fragments that make up a star.  When you collect all five star fragments, you complete the star with the overall goal of completing 85 stars. 

The game supports five separate profiles, so if you have one iPad and multiple children, it’s fun for the whole family. The menus are simple, have pretty colors, and the music is engaging and fun.  However, I did find myself a little frustrated with the controls at times. The tutorial is well done as it explains the touch mechanic by way of pictures, but the execution of the controls is a little off. I found myself touching on the screen where I wanted the icon to go rather than smoothly gliding it across the screen as the tutorial suggests.  I think the game could also benefit from some text-based instructions so the parent/child has a clear idea what the goals are.  

In terms of educational value, the App teaches simple driving rules such as understanding which direction to go when driving (if you try to go the wrong way, a big stop sign appears!).  It also encourages goal-directed behavior in children and inspires a little competition by way of tracking your progress. 

-- Michael Stroud, Executive Editor - Apps