You’re about to get ‘iFaceLaugh’ed yo!
If you’re the kind of person who needs “a pocket full of laughs” to brighten your day and are willing to pay 1.99$ for it, then iFaceLaugh may be just what your looking for. It’s a unique social iPhone & iPod Touch app that is all about capturing the essence of your friends, your family and random strangers who happen to walk by. Warning: this product is intended for “cool” people ONLY, so user discretion is highly advised! Results and satisfaction will undeniably vary greatly…
It is social/comedy hybrid apps like iFaceLaugh that really showcase the wonders of actually socializing with real people, face to face. However, like all other social and/or comedy apps (iFart anyone?) they tend to get really old very fast, especially those that border on gimmicky rip-off status. Thus, chances are you will be left with a .99-1.99$ app on your iPhone or iPod touch, that you most likely will only use for maybe a day or so, before inevitably deleting it within a week (or perhaps longer for those whose lame sensing abilities are a bit off). Also as with any social/comedy specific app, the value and satisfaction you ultimately get from it is entirely up to you, and how well you use it.
iFaceLaugh, for me was mostly all about the silliness that ensued while going around trying to acquire pictures and laughs of my friends and family. Its also extremely hilarious to bust out on complete strangers, just to see if you can get them to let you take their picture, record their laugh, and then play it back to them. It takes mad people skills to pull it off, but the end results will most definitely be hilarious. However, a word of advice though – don’t break this app out at a party unless you happen to be the cool guy, as doing so is risking utter embarrassment (trust me on this!)
The idea behind iFaceLaugh is very simple. You can easily snap or choose a photo from your camera roll and then record and attribute a sound (such as a laugh for instance) to it. Once you have attributed a sound to a photo, it will save/upload to your account and appear on your in-app home screen of other laughs and recorded sounds. Across the bottom of what looks like a ghetto fabulous GUI straight from the 90’s, there are 4 buttons. A my laughs button (used to create new laughs), a play one by one button, a play all at the same time button and a send laughs button (where you can email your laughs to your friends and family). Alternatively instead of tapping one of the play buttons, if you want to playback the sounds you have recorded thus far manually, you simply tap on one of the thumbnail images and the app will immediately play the sound you attributed to that image. On the top-right corner there is a trash can button that you tap on when you want to delete your laughs and a pair of smiley faces located on top-center representing the Laugh-a-Laugh game – just tap to bring up the menu.
Is it just me, or does this look ghetto fabulous?
Aside from just capturing the essence of your relatives, acquaintances and random strangers, many mischievous uses should immediately pop into mind, but its design sticks to the branding of the app so meticulously that it almost discourages experimentation. I can totally see this app being used in all kinds of silly, serious and spontaneous ways, in addition to just capturing laughs. I think it really would be more compelling if the design and branding took a more open minded approach. This pushed me ever so slightly to experiment and to actively find different uses for this app, because while fun and hilarious at first, simply attributing photos to a sound got old really fast.
The developers also threw in a game called Laugh-a-Laugh. It’s basically a game where two players try to match up laughs from their library of laughs. I really can’t explain it any differently than that, as it’s about as lame to play as it sounds on paper. And I honestly had way more fun just attributing photos to sounds and generally experimenting with the concept in silly and mischievous ways.
After spending some time with iFaceLaugh, I couldn’t bring myself to shake the gimmicky rip-off status feeling I was getting from the app, but at the same time, I was also deeply inspired (oddly enough). If nothing else, this app lead me to ponder the seemingly endless possibilities for social/comedy hybrid apps on mobile devices, such as the iPhone, iPod touch and now the iPad.
iFanzine Verdict:iFaceLaugh really brings a unique and interesting social concept to the app store, that is actually a lot fun (believe it or not), but for me that “fun” wore off way too fast for an app priced at the 1.99$ price point. If this was a 99C app, I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is absolutely bored out of their mind and burnt out on games in general for the moment. However at the 1.99$ price point, I think this is an app that may possibly make you cringe not laugh.
Score: 3.5 out of 10