Game guide
Little Explorers / Game guide / For grown-ups
The parental gate, every setting in the grown-ups area, the play-time limit, purchases and restoring them — and how the app handles your child’s privacy.
Anything meant for grown-ups sits behind a gate that pre-readers can’t pass. It shows three numbers written as words — for example SEVEN · TWO · FIVE — and asks you to type them on a number pad. A wrong code shakes the card and clears it; a new random code is drawn every time.
You’ll meet the gate when you:
Three switches, each ON or OFF: Sound effects, Music and Talking voice. With the voice off, captions still show what the narrator would say.
Choose Off, 15, 30, 45 or 60 minutes a day. Only time spent inside games counts, and the count starts again each calendar day.
When the time is up, a calm night-time screen appears with a sleepy owl: “Time for a break! Great exploring today. See you next time!” The only way past it is the grown-up button and the parental gate, where you can change or switch off the limit.
Use − and + to set an age from 2 to 12. It only changes which land the map opens on (2–3 Tiny Tots, 4–6 Create Land, 7–9 Brain Academy, 10–12 Genius Lab) — every land is always open.
Tap Reset progress, then “Tap again to reset” to confirm. This clears the child’s name and age, the chosen explorer, stars, stickers, every game’s level and the daily time limit — the app starts again as if new.
Reset keeps your sound, music and voice settings and any purchase. Paintings saved in the in-app gallery are not removed by a reset; they are deleted when the app is uninstalled.
There is one optional, one-time purchase per platform, and no subscriptions. It is only reachable through the parental gate.
Android — every game is open. “Remove ads” stops the occasional break-time ad for good.
iPhone and iPad — no ads, ever. The first two games in every land are free:
“Unlock all games” opens all the others in one go — and it supports Apple Family Sharing, so one purchase unlocks the games for everyone in your Family Sharing group, on their own devices.
With Apple’s Ask to Buy, the purchase waits for approval and the panel says “Waiting for approval from the family organiser.” Nothing is unlocked until it’s approved.
Reinstalled the app, or moved to a new phone or tablet? Open the grown-ups area and tap Restore purchases while signed in to the same Google Play account or Apple ID that made the purchase. The app also re-checks your purchase with the store each time it starts. On iPhone and iPad, members of your Family Sharing group can use Restore purchases on their own devices too.
Restore brings back the purchase, not game progress. Stars, stickers and levels live only on the device and can’t be moved to another one.
The iOS version contains no ads and no ad code at all.
No accounts, no chat, no analytics, and no access to the camera, microphone, location or contacts. The child’s first name and age are optional and stay on the device, as do progress, settings and saved paintings. The narrator uses the device’s own text-to-speech, which runs on the device; nothing is recorded.
Playing along
Repeat what the narrator says, name things before the game does, and count out loud. Talk is where most of the learning sticks.
Before you reach over to help, give the helping hand a moment — it is built to show the next step without giving the whole game away.
Tap the level badge to revisit an easier level. Confidence from a quick win is worth a lot.
The age only picks the starting land. Younger children love an older land’s art; older ones enjoy a calm Tiny Tots game.
The daily limit ends play with a friendly break screen, so the app — not you — says “that’s enough for today”.
Every game in the land guides has its levels listed and a couple of tips for playing along.
Credits
Art and sounds: Kenney.nl (CC0). Music: OpenGameArt.org artists (CC0). Fonts: Fredoka (SIL Open Font License) and Luckiest Guy (Apache 2.0). Extra pictures and the musical instruments are drawn and synthesised in code.