Here's a graphical walkthrough of Littlest Pet Shop in action on the Nokia 808:
That's right - no mess, no insurance, no barking - just cute, wide-eyed pets in sugar-coated, honey-glazed, pink-painted LPS land...
The opening few minutes of LPS are accompanied by some very well thought out narration/help, complete with extra animated 'press here' arrows (one such shown below):
Things are bought in this virtual world with either coins or 'blings' (of which more later).
Typical activities involve washing your pet by tapping and dragging until the wash bar fills up. We're talking super-easy gameplay here...
As you progress, you buy extra pets and win extra 'stuff', including accommodation and accessories.
A cat and dog painting on the roof of a beach house? Only in Littlest Pet Shop...!
LPS plays in 8 languages, so thumbs-up here.
Ah yes, those Blings. While you (or your 4 year old) can play Littlest Pet Shop happily for a while for free, more and more things appear which need paying for with 'blings'. These are, you guessed it, only purchasable with a real world in-app purchase (typically starting at £1.50 and going up from there):
Payment can be via phone credit or through a link through to a web page for entering your daddy's credit card details:
As a 50 year old male LPS isn't aimed at me nor, I suspect, you. It's a curious title to find popping up on Symbian at this stage in its life - I can only suppose that the target market is some of the hand me down Nokia 5800s and X6s that could be finding their way into little girl hands - but then the small 3.2" screens aren't going to make the interface that easy to operate, even with small 4 year old fingers.
Comments welcome if you have a daughter of less than 10 years old - care to road test this on them?