Masha and the Bear: My Friends

Review by eFreeware

Keeping a small child busy without handing them something overstimulating is a harder job than it sounds. Most games for preschoolers pile on noise and rewards until the child is wound up rather than settled. A game that mirrors the shape of a real day, with meals and bath time and bed, is a gentler option, and that is what this one sets out to be.

Masha and the Bear: My Friends comes from DEVGAME KIDS games. It is free to download, carries ads, and offers in-app purchases including a subscription that renews automatically unless it is turned off in advance. The Play Store shows more than 50 million installs and a 4.3 average from 53,742 ratings, which is a lot of families for a game released in September 2022.

A day with Masha and the Bear

The structure is a single day, split into morning, afternoon and evening, and the child moves through it in order. Morning starts with waking up, then a bath, where the game nudges toward habits like brushing teeth and showering. After that comes breakfast: the child picks items from a menu to put together a healthy meal for Masha and the Bear.

Getting dressed is part of the morning too. The closet opens and the child chooses outfits for both characters, which is the sort of small decision that tends to hold a young child's attention longer than it holds an adult's. The developer frames the whole thing as Tamagotchi-inspired pet care, and the rhythm of feeding, cleaning and tending does follow that older idea.

The afternoon is where the activities sit, and there are a lot of them. A harmonica, a rocket launch, tennis, a bike ride, fishing and roller skating are among the options, followed by lunch from the fridge with a balanced menu to choose from. Later in the afternoon there is an electric guitar with chords to learn, a shooting range, tidying the house, a volleyball game and a race. It reads like a real effort to keep a child moving between short, different tasks rather than repeating one loop.

Guests, manners and the end of the day

Evening shifts the tone. Visitors arrive with presents, and the child greets them with bread and hot tea, which the developer presents as a lesson in good manners. It is a small scene, but it is the part of the day that involves other characters rather than tasks, and it gives the routine a social beat before it winds down.

Then the day closes: teeth brushed, characters put to bed, and the game says goodnight. That ending matters more than it might seem. A game that finishes on a bedtime note gives a parent a natural place to stop, which is not something every children's title bothers to provide.

What the subscription covers

The app is free, and it carries advertising. It also offers in-app purchases, and subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each period. The free trial turns into a paid subscription unless you cancel auto-renewal at least a day before it runs out. Payment is taken within a day of the period ending.

The practical point for a parent is the auto-renewal. Turning it off is done through Google account settings, and it must be done at least 24 hours before the period ends to avoid the next charge. If you are trying this with a child, it is worth deciding before you start whether you want a subscription at all, because the default is that it continues.

The terms are there to read, and the trial-to-paid conversion is the part most worth reading twice.

Where it fits in a family's day

This is built for roughly four-year-olds. The activities are short, the interactions are taps and choices rather than reading or reflexes, and the content rating is Everyone. A child who is not yet reading should be able to work through most of it, which is the audience the whole design points at.

It suits a parent who wants a game with a beginning and an end rather than an endless feed. The day structure gives you a reason to say "one more thing and then bed," and the game itself models that. If you are looking for something to occupy a child on a long drive, this is not really shaped for that; it is shaped for a settled half hour at home.

The mini-game list is wide enough that a child is unlikely to exhaust it in one sitting, and the variety is the strongest argument for it. What I would keep in mind is that variety in a list is not the same as depth in each activity, and a child who latches onto one favorite will spend most of their time there.

A routine-shaped game for preschoolers

Masha and the Bear: My Friends is a free, ad-supported pet-care game for young children, with a day of meals, dressing, chores and mini-games and a subscription that renews automatically. It is best suited to parents of three- and four-year-olds who want a calm, structured game with a clear stopping point.

The strengths are the structure and the range of small activities; the trade-offs are the ads, the subscription terms and the fact that the content is aimed at a narrow age. If that age fits your household, it is an easy one to try, as long as you go into the settings and decide about auto-renewal first.

What's new in version 1.1.10

We've fixed all minor bugs!