Pottery, a few thoughts and not quite a review

A few people asked me if I'd let them know what this app was like so I thought I'd jot down a few thoughts on it.

I bought this app straight away for £2.99 which I didn't think was bad really. The app is a lot of fun to play with and is somewhere between a game and a form of relaxation.

When you first launch it it starts with an inbox which is a bit strange, but the mail in the inbox gives you a brief overview of what to do in the app so it is useful. You then get to your potter's wheel and the fun starts.

Moving the clay and making a bowl or pot or whatever it is you're making is very simple and straightforward and the app has amazing graphics that tilt the wheel and bowl and the background for you when you move your iPad. I enjoyed making a bowl which for the most part wouldn't work in the real world, or at least that's my view.

Once you've done that you can fire your creation in the kiln. Nice little simulation. After that it's on to painting and decorating your bowl. To begin with you just have a few colours and not much else, but this is where the game element comes in. Once you're done decorating it you can sell it at auction! Not a real auction of course, just inside the app, and depending on how good your creation is you'll get so many 'coins' for your hard work.

The more coins you get from selling your work at auction the more patterns and colours you can buy, and the more of those you have and use, the more your work will fetch at auction. That's essentially the game play part.

This is a fun app that is quite relaxing to use and has a lot of great graphics and design in it.

Is it a close approximation of the potter's wheel? No, probably not, but if it was it would probably take loads of time to get good at it, and I for one would get bored of it as if I'm going to learn pottery then I'd rather do it properly.

Having said all of that, if you have children I think that this will keep them amused for a while too.

I was interested to find out that there's actually more than 1 potter's wheel on the app store, and it made me wonder what other simulations of artistic process there were on the store.

Anyone know of any good ones?