The lands
Seven lands, one world
All the games live in seven lands, laid out youngest to oldest along a single scrolling map. Each land has its own mascot, landmark, music and colour, and every land is open from the start.
- Tiny Tots (ages 2–3) — Bubble Fun, Peekaboo, Animal Sounds, Magic Sky, Feed the Babies, Bath Time, Shape Sorter, Grow a Garden, Beep Beep Cars
- Create Land (ages 3–7) — Paint Studio, Magic Colouring, Monster Maker, Music Band, Colour Lab, Jigsaw Fun
- Letter Land (ages 3–7) — Letter Trail, Bubble Pop ABC, Animal Spelling, Sky Pilot
- Number Land (ages 3–7) — Bug Garden, Hungry Monster, Pattern Train, Dot to Dot, Fruit Market
- Discovery Bay (ages 3–7) — Ocean Dive, Space Trip, Animal Homes, Traffic Town, Feelings Friends, Memory Match, Shape Friends
- Brain Academy (ages 6–10) — Math Rocket, Clock Tower, Robot Coder, Picture Sudoku, Pizza Fractions, Word Wizard, Spot the Difference, Coin Shop, Maze Runner
- Genius Lab (ages 10–12) — Pixel Logic, Equation Lab, Flag Quest, Word Search, Tangram Master, Circuit Lab, Number Ninja, Slide Puzzle, Code Breaker
The age picks where the map opens. It never locks a land away.
Getting started
Your explorer, your name, your age
The first launch takes about a minute. After the title screen — itself a little playground of tappable animals — the app asks three things, and the grown-up can skip two of them.
- Pick an explorer — Mia, Leo, Zara, Max or Bolt the robot. They walk the map, cheer at every win and ride the rocket in Space Trip.
- Type a first name on a big letter-tile keyboard (up to 12 letters, each spoken as it is tapped), or skip. The narrator uses it now and then, and two letter games let your child trace and fly it.
- Tap an age from 2 to 12 on four floating sky islands. It only chooses the starting land: 2–3 Tiny Tots, 4–6 Create Land, 7–9 Brain Academy, 10–12 Genius Lab.
- Change the explorer any time from the picture at the top left of the map; change the age in the grown-ups area.
The name and age stay on the device. Neither is ever required.
The map
A living, tappable menu
The home screen is not a grid of icons. It is a world that scrolls sideways, with each land’s gate, mascot and landmark, and its games as illustrated postcards along a winding path. Tap a postcard and the explorer walks there before the game opens.
- The sky behind each land is its own little scene and cross-fades as you scroll: winged pencils and splat clouds over Create Land, drifting letter balloons over Letter Land, a numbered-kite festival over Number Land, planets and a jumping whale over Discovery Bay, soap bubbles over Tiny Tots, gears and paper planes over Brain Academy, and a neon synthwave grid over Genius Lab
- Tapping empty sky does something different in every land — paint splashes, popping letters, counting stars, bubbles, sparks, a neon ping
- Seven land tabs along the bottom jump straight to a land, and the mascot at each gate says the land’s welcome
- Scenery joins in: ducks quack, toy blocks say their letters, a rocket counts down to blast-off
Levels
Over 430 levels, and a map to revisit them
Most games climb a ladder of levels, and each level adds something new — a new scene, a new rule, a new idea — rather than just bigger numbers. Usually two wins at a level unlock the next, with a big “Level up!” celebration.
- 5 levels in every Tiny Tots game, each a brand-new scene
- 10 levels in nearly every game for ages 3–10
- 12 or 13 levels in every Genius Lab game
- The level badge in each game’s top bar shows the current level and a dot for each one; tap it for “Pick a level!” and replay any level already reached
- Levels never go down by themselves, and the last level keeps serving fresh rounds
An easier level is always one tap away. So is the next challenge.
Rewards
Stars, 50 stickers and a daily surprise
Every finished round earns stars that fly up to the counter at the top of the screen. In most games no mistakes earns three, one or two earn two, and more earn one — so there is always at least one.
- The sticker book — the first sticker arrives after the very first star, then a new one every three stars, 50 in all. A red “!” on the book button means one is waiting
- The daily surprise egg — once a day an egg appears beside the explorer. Tap it to hatch an animal, hear its name and a fact, and earn a bonus star
- Tiny Tots always gives the full three stars; a few puzzles (Memory Match, Slide Puzzle, Code Breaker) count moves or guesses instead of mistakes
- Creative games add small bonus stars: saving a painting, or making a monster dance
For non-readers
A narrator and a helping hand
Little Explorers assumes the child can’t read yet. Every game starts with a spoken instruction, and every instruction appears as a caption too.
- The narrator uses the device’s own offline text-to-speech in English; numbers 1–10 and some praise use a recorded voice
- The speaker button in every game repeats the instruction
- The helping hand — for the first three plays of each game, an animated hand with a pulsing highlight shows the next move straight away; after that it steps in whenever your child is stuck (after about 4 seconds in Tiny Tots, 6.5 in most games, 14 in Genius Lab) or right after a mistake
- Mistakes get a gentle sound, a wobble and encouragement (“Almost! Have another go.”) — never a buzzer, a lost life or a countdown
Nothing in the app needs reading. Text is a bonus.
Tiny Tots
Designed so a two-year-old can’t fail
The youngest land follows stricter rules than the rest of the app.
- Giant targets and one-step actions: tap, drag, rub
- No failure states at all — a wrong tap gets a giggle, a sound or a little surprise
- Every finished round earns three stars and a celebration
- Voice lines of a few words, and the helping hand after only about four seconds
- Five levels per game, each a brand-new scene: a garden, a bath tub, the night sky, a birthday party…
Big kids
Brain Academy and Genius Lab
The two oldest lands are real challenges for primary-school children, without timers or fail screens.
- Brain Academy (6–10) — arithmetic to times tables, telling the time to five minutes, first coding with loops, picture sudoku, fractions, phonics and spelling patterns, money and change, and mazes with keys and doors
- Genius Lab (10–12) — nonograms up to 10×10, balancing equations, 61 countries’ flags and capitals, word search in 13 themes, tangrams, circuits and logic gates, mental maths to primes and percentages, slide puzzles and Mastermind-style code breaking
- Stars reward care: mistakes, moves or guesses decide one, two or three stars, and the narrator explains what went wrong
- Genius Lab has a dark neon “lab” look and a calmer, more grown-up voice, and gives about 14 seconds of thinking time before any hint
Hard enough to be proud of. Never stressful.
Art studio
Paint Studio and Magic Colouring
Two free-play art games with no levels, no right answers and nothing to finish.
- 32 named colours, each spoken when picked, and three brush sizes
- Nine tools: brush, crayon (bumpy and waxy), pencil (thin and neat), rainbow brush, glitter (12 sparkle colours), spray paint, 16 picture stamps, a paint bucket and an eraser
- Mirror and kaleidoscope modes make every stroke symmetrical
- Undo up to 12 steps; clearing the page needs two taps so nothing is lost by accident
- Magic Colouring has ten line drawings that fill from the finger outwards, with glitter and rainbow fills
- The camera button saves the picture to an in-app gallery (the newest 12 are shown) — kept in the app’s private storage, not the photo library
Music
An animal band
Music Band has three ways to play, all in tune by design.
- Xylophone — eight rainbow bars from C to C, each played by an animal, with five sounds: xylophone, piano, bell, guitar and flute
- Songs — tap the glowing bar to play Twinkle Twinkle, Mary Had a Little Lamb, Old MacDonald, Row Your Boat and Happy Birthday; parrot echo games train listening; the last level plays Twinkle Twinkle from memory
- Beat Maker — Boom, Tap, Tss and Clap over eight steps, three speeds and four ready-made beats, which keep playing while you switch back to the xylophone
- Elsewhere, correct steps play rising notes, Magic Sky chimes on a five-note scale, and Bubble Fun climbs a scale with every pop
Grown-ups
The parent zone
A small grown-up button at the bottom right of the map opens a parental gate: three numbers written as words (“SEVEN · TWO · FIVE”) to type on a keypad, with a new code every time.
- Sound effects, Music and Talking voice — three ON/OFF switches
- Daily play time — Off, 15, 30, 45 or 60 minutes of game time a day, ending with a calm “Time for a break!” screen only a grown-up can get past
- Child’s age — 2 to 12, which changes the starting land
- Reset progress — two taps to confirm; keeps settings and purchases
- The one-time purchase and Restore purchases, plus a short privacy note and credits
Purchases
One payment, never a subscription
There is one optional purchase per platform, always behind the parental gate.
- Android — every game is free, with an occasional child-safe ad when leaving a game. “Remove ads” ($4.99, one time) switches ads off for good
- iPhone and iPad — no ads ever. The first two games in every land are free; “Unlock all games” ($4.99, one time) opens every game
- On iOS the unlock supports Apple Family Sharing: one purchase covers everyone in the family group
- Prices appear in your local currency; Ask to Buy and family approval are supported
- “Restore purchases” brings a purchase back on a reinstall or a new device, and the app re-checks with the store at every launch
- No coins, gems, loot boxes or anything else to buy inside the games
Pay once or not at all. Nothing in a game ever asks a child for money.
Offline and private
No accounts, no data, no internet needed
Little Explorers is built for children under 13 and collects no personal information.
- Every game works offline — on a plane, in the car, anywhere
- No accounts, sign-in, chat, analytics or tracking; no camera, microphone, location or contacts access
- Progress, settings, the optional name and age, and saved paintings stay in the app’s private storage on the device
- On Android, ads come from Google AdMob as child-directed, G-rated, non-personalised requests without the advertising ID; the iOS version has no ad code at all
- No external links for children to tap
Next
See it game by game
The guide walks through a first session step by step; the almanac lists every game, level, sticker, animal, country and word list in the app.