How we build calm learning games

The rules every game follows

Every game follows 23 rules drawn from research on young children and screens. The ones a computer can check are checked automatically before any change goes live. Games for big kids may keep a score for the round, and they keep every other rule.

• Slow, smooth motion. Movements take about half a second and nothing loops, shakes or flashes. The phone's Reduce motion setting turns motion off.
• Plain screens. The task and nothing competing with it. Real, familiar pictures.
• Warm colors, and a dimmer, warmer evening look after 6 PM.
• No background music. One clear voice and at most one soft sound per action.
• Gentle mistakes. No buzzer and no red X. A wrong letter settles back, and a still hint shows after a pause.
• Praise that names what the child did, like "You spelled cat!". No stars, coins, streaks, timers or "one more" prompts in games for little kids.
• A natural stopping point. Short rounds that end on "All done". Nothing starts by itself.
• A line for the grown-up on the "All done" screen, to talk about it together away from the screen.
• Big targets for small fingers, and tap and drag both work.
• A Child lock in every game.
• Helps for every child, in every game: Easier reading for dyslexia, Read it to me, bigger buttons, more time, less motion, quiet sounds, clearer contrast and captions. How to turn them on.
• A clear learning goal that builds slowly: easy first, new ideas one at a time.
• Playable on mute. Every spoken line shows as a caption a grown-up can read aloud, and a hint dims the rest of the screen instead of circling something.
• A Full screen button in every game, and nothing goes full screen by itself.
• Made for children who cannot read yet. Every instruction has a picture as well as the voice, there are no Next buttons in the little games, and a house button always goes back to the games.
• Letters are dragged to their place, not tapped there, so guessing by tapping never works.
• Tapping fast never makes progress. After a wrong answer the game waits until it has said its line before it takes another.
• Levels come from your child's age. A grown-up sets the age once; your child never picks a level, and Too easy and Too hard are in each game's For grown-ups box.

Privacy

There is no sign-in and no profile. Nothing your child types, says or does in a game is recorded. The games never use the camera or location, and never the microphone during play. Settings, like the Child lock and the voice, are kept only on your device. We count anonymous page visits with Google Analytics: which pages are opened, the kind of device, and a rough region that Google works out. Ads signals are turned off, and no name, nothing your child types or says, and no other personal information is sent. Ads come from Google AdSense, only on the arcade home page and never inside a game. Every ad request is marked as aimed at children, so Google shows no personalized or remarketing ads here. Google may still use cookies or similar device data to show and count those ads and to stop fraud. There are no other tracking scripts.

The voice, and recording your own

The games can talk in your voice. Record your own voice: read the 12 Classic Stories page by page (about a minute a story), or record the letter names, the letter sounds, the cheers and "All done!" (a few minutes). Anything you haven't recorded is said by the arcade's recorded voice.

Out of the box, every game talks in Autonoe, a clear, calm voice recorded once with Google Cloud Text-to-Speech (Chirp 3: HD), never while your child plays. In each game's "For grown-ups" box you can pick another: Bella (a little brighter) or Heart (warm and calm), both recorded with a free, open-source voice model, your phone's own voice, or up to three family voices that grown-ups record themselves (Mom, Dad, Grandma and so on). You tick three boxes first (that you are the child's parent or guardian and 18 or older, that it is your own voice, and that the recordings stay on the phone). Your recordings stay on that phone only and are never sent anywhere, and Delete all recordings removes them.

Watch plays videos in YouTube's own player, in its privacy mode. YouTube's own rules apply inside that player.

Check your child's reading level

The Reading Level Check is a short check you do together, about 5 to 10 minutes: your child reads letters and words out loud, and you tap Got it or Not yet. It ends with the reading skills your child has, the grade level they line up with in the Common Core reading standards and the Dolch sight word lists, and what to practice next. Results stay on your device, with the date, so you can check again every few months and see the growth.

It is a quick check, not a diagnosis or a standardized test, and it never compares your child with other children. If you are worried about your child's reading, talk with their teacher or pediatrician.

Ages 7 to 10

Games for big kids are real arcade games that teach, so they may keep score and move faster, but never with streaks, loot boxes or pay-to-win. They are Tell the Time (ages 7 to 9), Counting Money (ages 7 to 9) and Multiplication (ages 8 to 10); more are on the way.

Do you like games too?

We thought so. Grown-ups get their own arcade: Party Games Arcade has party games you play together on your phones, with a TV if you have one. Quick laughs for game night, nothing to download.

Both arcades were selected to provide games for RightPlace, the app for finding the right restaurant or bar tonight, so families have something good to play at the table. We're proud of that.

More to explore

• Reading Level Check
• Helps for dyslexia and more
• Questions and answers
• Spell the Picture
• Watch