Sunset Train – Top Relaxing Bedtime Story Game For Kids By Jeremy Horton – Review

Sunset Train by Jeremy Horton is a universal app for iOS designed for toddlers, preschoolers and others who like to have a routine for bedtime.  This app is bright and colorful and as the different passengers are picked up  and dropped off the pace of the app slows down to encourage your child that bedtime will be soon.  The app features an adjustable length (10, 15 or 20 minutes), musical soundtrack as well as narration in English.  The app features a countryside with a driver Wolfie going around to pick up the different animals and bring them home safely.  Wolfie provides an ongoing narration throughout the app as well as driving the train and says polite hello and goodbye to all the animals boarding.

One of my favorite features of the app was the ability to set the time limit and it was easy to change on the fly meaning you could sometimes play longer than others.  This meant that there would be no “fight” at the end of the app – simply when the story was completed the time on the iPad was done.  I also liked that you could turn down the narration and music and that the voices got softer and softer as the end of the app neared.  This app can be helpful for establishing routines especially with preschoolers and toddlers who may fight bedtime.  I also heard that it has been very helpful with special needs children as it helps them to set a routine at bedtime and encourage them to go to sleep in a timely manner.  I also liked that the app provided choices of which passenger you wanted to drop off first via a pop up at the bottom of the screen.  I also added to the app by explaining what each of the characters did –  for example the bakers made bread which encouraged my son to remember which characters were picked up where and what they did in future times of playing it.  The graphics in this app were incredible and featured bright vibrant colors which dulled as the night went on signaling bedtime.

In terms of improvements – I found that once we played through the app the content did get a bit stale after a while as the characters did not change.  This means that the audience for the app will generally be toddlers, preschoolers or special needs children who crave the “routine” of a bedtime story completion.  My son also wished that he could make the train go faster or slower, once you tap the button to start the train moving, it will continue to move without anything being touched or tapped.  He also wished he could revisit the “nighttime tunnel” which is featured at the beginning of the app – the only way he figured out how to was to restart the app.  I’d also like to see a future version with an option for the words to be narrated on the screen in a true storybook type.  My son also wanted to know if he could sit the characters where he wanted versus the app placing them in specific seats – I explained that specific seats were assigned and then he wanted to know why they didn’t have pictures to show where they belonged.

Overall, this app is well designed for parents of preschoolers and toddlers who need routines especially to help them prepare for bedtime.  This app can also be very helpful for children with special needs including autism as it provides concrete reinforcement that at the end of the time limit (10,15, 20) minutes that the app is completed and all the animals are home and in bed.  It can also be used to teach the social skill of saying hello and goodbye to others as well since this is repeated over and over again within the app. This app is available via iTunes.

Note:  This review was originally published at The iMums in 2014, we have not updated the review with the exception of updating the name of the app.