The Gruffalo Spotter 2 4+

Ok first two, kept crashing for last 3 footprints

This is a great idea and the graphics are super, when it works!

It drains your phone. I have an iPhone 7 and IOS 14.6. I started the walk with 80% battery and by the end had 20%, around an hour later.

The app found the first two footprints ok but had real trouble recognising the owl and snake, and then the animation kept crashing. My toddler eventually ran out of patience, and we moved on.

The app takes ages to load up and I found I needed to reload it each time we found a new footprint to get it to work, so you need to be ready in advance if you have impatient small children about. Also none of the gestures my children made were recognised by the app so we had to auto run the video every time.

Also, none of the photos I took saved to my photos. Thankfully my toddler didn’t ask!

App developers: what would be helpful is:

1) if it runs more efficiently in airplane mode, please add a note to the app to say this!
2) can you reduce the time the app takes to load?
3) if the phone has trouble recognising the footprint, could you add a function to choose the appropriate animation? It would have been much easier for me if I could have just selected it from a list.
4) please sort out the photo storage.

Developer Response ,

Hi there, thank you so much for your feedback and we are sorry that you had trouble while using our app. We are aware of some of the issues people are having at the moment with our app and we are working hard to try and rectify them. We are able to help you get the photos from the app, if you email us at office@magiclightpictures.com we are able to help you directly, thank you, Magic Light

Unfit for purpose, nice idea, good animations

This is a lovely idea, but unfortunately it is not fit for purpose. It crashes frequently, has difficulty picking up the on screen motion and resets itself if someone walks in front of the camera. This makes it almost impossible to use with any success and turned a pleasant walk through the forest into a fraught and upset-children-filled drama. In addition the children of course want to see what is on the screen, not be in front of it. There is an automatic play option, which is helpful, but it should just play through without interruption or delay. All in all it was a disappointment, which is such a shame because a lot of work has clearly gone into the animation. It also stop working if you lose the signal, which is obviously quite often in the forest. A real shame.

Crashes and drains battery

This app crashes all the time. I had a black screen half of the time around the walk. It also takes ages to find the footprint sign which starts the animation. This caused a backup of people waiting to do it which made it stressful. My battery was at 92% when I started and it was at 39% by the end - the walk took 40 minutes. A good idea poorly executed. This makes me wonder how bad the gruffalo 1 app was to have the need to replace it.

Developer Response ,

Hi, We're sorry to hear you've experienced technical problems using The Gruffalo Spotter 2. We are currently looking into them as a matter of urgency and it would be helpful to know which site you were visiting and what phone and IOS you use. If you have time to email us these details at office@magiclightpictures.com we can support you directly. Thanks, Magic Light