The first game a child can play on their own
Most apps for this age quietly assume a grown-up is sitting there to read the buttons out. This one does not. Every instruction is spoken, every button is a picture, and a two year old can open it and get going while you make the tea.
Four games are free from beginning to end. The browser version needs no download and no sign-up.
It starts earlier than counting
Ask a two year old how many biscuits are on the plate and you will not get an answer. Ask which plate has more and you will. Comparison comes first, long before number does, and it is the thing that later gives counting a reason to exist.
So the games are laid out the way a child actually arrives at these ideas. More or less before counting. Counting before adding. A rhythm you can clap back before a tune you can play. Four seasons that come round again before the word for any one of them.
Your child sees the ones they are ready for
The list is chosen by age, so a two year old opens on colours, shapes and matching pairs rather than a wall of things they cannot do yet. New games turn up as they grow, which is the part that keeps this worth having for longer than a fortnight.
Twenty-four levels in every game, and three stars to earn on each one.
A marble run, a circuit board, and a year in one tree
The later games are the ones children remember. Turn pipe tiles until the marble can roll all the way down. Wire a lamp to a battery and watch it really light, because a circuit is a loop and the loop is the whole idea. Watch one tree go bare, bud, green, gold and bare again until the year comes round.
Each of them ends with something happening rather than a tick appearing. That is the difference between a game and a quiz, and it is why a child asks to play it again.
Help arrives at your child's pace, not the app's
Twelve seconds of silence is a long time for a stuck two year old and no time at all for a five year old who is thinking. So the wait is set by age: a nudge after six seconds at the younger end, twenty-six at the older, and the answer itself if the nudge was not enough.
Nothing is timed, nothing is taken away, and there is no streak to break by missing a day. When the daily limit runs out the octopus on screen falls asleep rather than looking disappointed, because nothing was lost.
The grown-up settings sit behind a gate
Three numbers written out as words, and a keypad to type them on. It takes you a couple of seconds and a four year old cannot get past it. Behind it you set the daily limit, switch individual games on or off, and decide whether the microphone and camera are used at all.
The limit counts across the whole day rather than the sitting, so closing the app and opening it again does not buy more. Your child never sees a countdown, because a visible clock turns the last five minutes into five minutes of watching a clock.
There is nothing to collect, so nothing is collected
No adverts, no analytics, no third-party code reporting on your family, and no link a child can wander out through. Two of the games can use the camera or the microphone. Both stay off until you turn them on, both work entirely on the device, and nothing they see or hear is ever recorded, saved or sent anywhere.
Four games are free, start to finish
Every other game gives you its first six levels, which is enough to know whether your child takes to it.
One payment opens the rest. No subscription, nothing else to buy, and the purchase screen is behind the parental gate.
On a phone or a tablet
The whole game, offline, with every mode and all twenty-four levels of each.
Prefer to look first? Play the demo in your browser
Made by one person, not a studio. I am Jan. I build NoMiLudo on my own, from southern Germany. There is no analytics in here, so I cannot see what your child plays or where they get stuck. Writing to me is the only way I find out: [email protected].