Flips: The Magic Faraway Tree Review - Screenshot 1 of 1

The latest in EA's Flips series of digital children's books, The Magic Faraway Tree is part of Enid Blyton's well-known Faraway Tree Stories, with other stories from the collection due to arrive in the coming weeks.

As with other games in the Flips series, there are some interactive features to maintain your interest: collecting enough variously-coloured mushrooms along the way unlocks extra features, including instructions to create your own stick puppets and snap a photo of them. There's the usual array of sound effects and character profiles too, in case you're struggling to keep up with the cast of barmy characters.

For those unfamiliar with the stories, they're set in an enchanted forest in which the magical Faraway Tree grows. Both magical and enormous, the tree's uppermost branches hide houses and a ladder at the top that transports the user to a new land each time it is used, opening up the way for plenty of adventures.

In terms of differences with the other Flips titles, the most noticeable is the lack of interstitial quizzes along the way, though this isn't any big loss. The unlockable book is a biography of Enid Blyton, a disappointing extra considering the possibilities, but presumably EA is still sat on the other titles to release them separately in future.

Conclusion

If you've played a Flips title before you'll know what to expect, but the story itself is very different to anything yet released on the system. Those after a convenient way to experience this classic tale could do worse than to download this.