COPPA Reviews: ‘Jungle Adventures’

Welcome to Pixalate’s CTV & Mobile App Manual Reviews According to COPPA, a series containing the detailed factors the Trust & Safety Advisory Board educators used to assess an app’s child-directedness.

The educators manually review thousands of mobile apps available in the Google Play & Apple App Stores as well as connected TV (CTV) apps from the Roku Channel Store and Amazon Fire TV App Store using the COPPA Rule factors shown below & make those results available to the public at ratings.pixalate.com.

This post takes a look at a CTV app from both the Amazon Fire TV Store and the Roku Channel Store. Our reviewer discusses how the subjective factors set forth in the COPPA Rule apply to the app and factor into the reviewer's determination as to whether the app is child-directed or general audience (i.e., it is not targeting children).

Manually reviewed in this post

Jungle Adventures (Fire TV) Jungle Adventures (Roku)

Reviewed by: Emma Burdis

The 10 COPPA Rule factors

The teacher will indicate the factors they relied upon in their assessment using the 10 factors shown below that reflect the 10 child-directed factors in the COPPA Rule.

Manual Review: Jungle Adventures

Likely audience after manual review

Developer: Rendered Ideas
Roku App Store ID: 604766
Fire App ID: B07LFZWGL2
Privacy Policy
Emma’s take: A straightforward platform game with child-friendly characters and animation.

COPPA factors used to determine audience

The visuals of Jungle Adventures are instantly familiar to anyone who has played side-scroll platform games, such as Super Mario. The player controls the character to move along the level, collecting goodies and avoiding enemies along the way. In Jungle Adventures, our aim is to collect various fruits and vegetables whilst avoiding rogue snails, sharks, kangaroos etc. The whole setup is very child-friendly and even the main character has the look of a young wildling.

Jungle Adventures features an upbeat, happy soundtrack featuring a ukulele and glockenspiel. The music is similar to the license-free instrumental tracks which are often used on over the top of kids YouTube videos. The same music plays on an approximately one-minute loop and over time can become mildly irritating. However, it appears that children don’t mind this repetition, a personal observation supported by a child’s ability to watch several hours of mystery egg-opening videos without pause.

The animation used in Jungle Adventures is familiar and friendly. Floating brick blocks and bouncing broccoli against a sunny blue sky make for a fun experience for youngsters. Gamers have a choice of characters if they are willing to upgrade to the premium subscription. The controls are intuitive but also a little clunky when using a Roku remote control - it is tricky to jump forward or back since the remote control can’t register two buttons at once. The same game is also available through the Google and Apple app stores for use on phones and tablets, where the controls are most likely easier to navigate.

Privacy

The Developer website has a fairly brief Privacy Policy which covers all the games in their portfolio. There are no specific clauses discussing their approach to children’s privacy. This app has no age gate.

Screenshots of Jungle Adventures:

About Pixalate’s Trust & Safety Advisory Board

Pixalate’s Trust and Safety Advisory Board was created to bring in individuals with experience using child-directed apps in the classroom to review and assess which apps are child-directed. This manual review process serves to quality check Pixalate’s automated review process. See our full methodology for more information.

Disclaimer

This blog post published by Pixalate is available for informational purposes only and is not considered legal advice. By viewing this blog post, the reader understands and agrees that there is no attorney-client relationship between the reader and the blog publisher. The blog should not be used as a substitute for legal advice from a licensed professional attorney in the applicable jurisdiction(s), and readers are urged to consult their own legal counsel on any specific legal questions concerning any specific situation. The content of this blog post reflects Pixalate's opinions with respect to factors that Pixalate believes may be useful to the digital media industry. Pixalate's opinions are just that, opinions, which means that they are neither facts nor guarantees; and this blog post is not intended to impugn the standing or reputation of any entity, person or app, but instead, to report findings pertaining to mobile and Connected TV (CTV) apps.