Chewits Cool Crazy Carnival ~ A review by the teenagers

My teenagers were given the task to review a new computer app. the Chewits Cool Crazy Carnival for age 13+ and they've been sent an amazing box full of Chewits sweets to try while they do so! 

The very very best thing about all of these Chewits sweets, aside from the taste, and the chewiness obviously, is that they're ALL vegetarian, which means for just about the first time ever, all of my children can have equal share and no-one has to 'make do' or find something else.

My teenagers were a bit put off by the 'Carnival' initially as they didn't know what was going to happen and they had to either fill in the form, or connect to Facebook. They're dubious of 'spamming' and didn't want to post loads of Facebook status they had no control over, alternatively the form option asks for your school name, which in our house they're banned from sharing. I told them they could just put 'school' and after that initial hiccup, they were off.

The app only works on a computer, it isn't able to work on a mobile yet, which meant they ended up taking turns.

My 13 year old girl played with the 'Carnival' for longest and she really enjoyed taking the faces of her 2 best friends and installing them onto cartoon bodies so that they could visit the carnival with her.

I tried the app myself and connected via Facebook, choosing to share 'only me'. The app did share 5 stills from the Carnival, which is a little excessive, but they had the faces of my 2 chosen friends on cartoon bodies, so they were quite amusing. Because I'd connected to Facebook my latest status update, birthday and school name also appeared in the carnival, as well as bits of other information which were quite funny - I especially liked the 'I love Euan' on the back of my character's bag, as that's my partner!

There is all sorts of information about Chewits here, photo's from 'Treat Truck' travels, information about sports courses and plenty of space for you to have your say. There are 5 games to play too -  Mystic Chewie, The Claw, Castle Adventure, Spaceship Adventure and Taste Adventure.

Mystic Chewie is an animated fortune teller. You choose a subject and are given a one sentence fortune in return.  For example choose 'Flavour' and you might get this is reply - "Chewie sees your favourite flavour to be Fruit Salad because you are so fruity and fun!"

The 3 Adventures games are 'point and click' puzzles. These puzzles are okay, some of it is very logical (e.g. try the key in the lock) but some is a bit random and very much open to chance and searching around the page for clickable items.

The Chewits Claw is the big game. You can actually compete to win prizes including an iPod Touch. It's based on the claw machines where you grab at toys and try to lift them up and you have to be very precise with where you place your claw or you score!

Points are gained by collecting Chewits. You can get extra points by filling up the bars on the right and collecting specific amounts of particular Chewits when asked.

It's very simple and addictive in the same way as Tetris, but actually a bit more frustrating because once you get tired you simply can't get a good score at all and you need to walk away! My best score so far is a disappointing 18400, sadly massively beaten by my teenagers!

So what did they think of the Chewits Cool Crazy Carnival? 

13 yo -

• I like the heads, they're funny.
• I don't understand why I had to put all that information in?
• The carnival is good, but I don't see where it goes because you can't choose the rides there
• No Claw score given

 14yo

• The Claw is a bit hard to get in the right place. 
• If it was a phone app I would probably get it because I'm competitive
• No Claw score given

15yo

• Carnival set up was longish and led to very little apart from a link, and the data wasn't even included when playing the games
• The Claw is very addictive
• It would be better on phones
• Best Score 52500

15yo (Winner of the most thorough review ever by a teenager)

Fairground

• No pause button =(
• Asks personal questions
• Can't save photo's

Castle

• Kind of frustrating
• Simple point and click
• Puzzle solving fun

Aliens

• Yay!

Mystic Chewie

• Highly amusing - not gamey

The Claw

• I don't like 'invite your friends' feature
• Super addictive
• Makes me want Chewits
• Not Chew Bad (Gr9* pun)
• Best score 28900

*Gr9 is like gr8, but one better....

Overall it got the 'thumbs up' from my lot. They all messed around with it a bit and completed at least one of the 'Adventures', and at least 2 have returned to try and better their best scores.

The website can be a bit glitchy and asks for upgrades to Flash that aren't helpful sometimes when you play 'The Claw' or 'Mystic Chewie', but these games can be played directly through Facebook from the Chewits page with no issue anyway.

Plenty of good harmless fun!

We were sent a box of Chewits and will be given a Theme Park ticket for the teenagers in return for reviewing this app.