Questions

No. There is no chat, no comments and no friend requests — not filtered, absent. There is also no sharing: no links, no public Worlds, and no way to send a game to anyone. To show someone a game, your child hands them the tablet.

No. There is no currency, no shop and no loot boxes, and nothing in your child’s part of the app takes a payment.

The app is free for now. If we ever charge for anything, it will be something a grown-up decides, and we will say so on the pricing page first.

No. The first time the app opens, it makes an account for that device by itself, and your child is straight in.

We never ask a child for a name, an email address, a password or a birthday, so we do not hold any of it. The account has a 16-digit save code instead, shown on the Save code button on the home screen.

Yes. Open the app there, tap I have a code, and type the save code. The same Worlds open, and the first device stays signed in.

Their games are saved online rather than on a particular tablet, so nothing gets left behind. Keep the save code written down: it is the only way back to them.

No. There is no AI in the app: no chatbot, nothing that generates pictures, rules or games, and nothing that reads what your child makes.

That also means nothing your child makes is sent to an AI service or used to train one.

Not online. There is no multiplayer, no lobby and no friend list, and nobody else can see or visit their Worlds. A child makes a game and plays it.

Plenty of children hand the tablet to someone next to them and say play my game. That works, and nothing is sent to anyone.

We can tell you what the app does, not what it will do for your child.

In gentle play, which a grown-up switches on, there is no timer and no way to lose, so there is no failure state to get stuck on and no run to be knocked out of. Work saves as they go and every version is kept, so stopping at any point costs nothing. Mistakes take one tap to undo. Nobody they do not know can reach them, because there is no chat.

Some children find that suits them very well. We are not going to make a clinical claim beyond that.

Their Worlds are saved online under the account, so they are not lost with the device. Install the app again, tap I have a code, and type the save code to get them back.

Without the save code there is no way to find the account again, so write it down or take a photo. A grown-up can also delete the account, and every World in it, from the Save code screen.

Yes, with a save code each. Each account keeps its own Worlds, so nobody paints over anybody else’s work. To switch, open the Save code screen and choose Use another code.

It depends how old. It runs in a browser, so there is nothing to install from a store, but an iPad needs to be on iPadOS 16.4 or later, and a very old or slow one may struggle with 3D.

The quickest way to be sure is to open the first lesson on the device in question. It is free, needs no account, and is the same editor your child will use.

Roblox is a place to play games other people have made, and to make your own. It has chat, a virtual currency and a marketplace. This is for making your own game and playing it, and it has none of those.

Scratch is free, began at the MIT Media Lab, and can do more than this can — if your child is happy in it, they may not need us. Its blocks are labelled in words; here every rule card is a picture.

codeSpark Academy teaches the basics of coding through puzzles and games, and is aimed at younger children. The games here are 3D, with rules your child invents.

The full comparison

Yes, for now. Every lesson, every tool and as many Worlds as your child wants to make. There is no account to make, no card and no trial.

We may charge for some things later. If we do, we will say so on the pricing page first, and the Worlds your child has already made will stay theirs to play and change.

Not about your child. An account has no name, email address or birthday in it. What we hold is the account’s Worlds, a hash of its save code (not the code itself) and the dates they were made. There are no ads and no tracking or analytics tools in the app.

The privacy notice has the full list, and says what the website itself does.

The privacy notice

One lesson is ready to play. It is called Make it yours: your child picks a look for their hero, plays a small game that already works, adds a thing of their own, and plays it again.

More lessons are being made. We will list each one on the lessons page once a child can play it.

How a lesson works

Not to follow the first lesson. Spark says every line aloud, shows it as words too, and points at what to tap. The rules in a game are picture cards.

A few things do use words, such as the names on Spark’s three buttons, so a child who can’t read yet may want a grown-up beside them for those. The voice is your device’s own, so it sounds different from one device to the next.

Yes, at any step. Tapping Spark’s face shows Say it again, Skip this step and Stop the lesson. Stopping leaves their World as it is, and the lesson can be played again from the shelf.

No. Neither does your child — there is no text code in the product at all.

It is the real shape of it, without the typing. Every card says when something happens (the game starts, every few seconds, the score reaches a number, everything is collected, the player comes near, something is touched) and what to do about it. Some cards count and some wait for a condition: events, conditions and counters, which a lot of programming is made of.

There is no text code, and any combination of cards will run. We do not say it will teach your child to program, only that it is what they will be doing.

What they actually learn

Partly. A game that has already been opened on a device keeps opening and playing there without a connection, and anything changed waits on the device until the connection is back. Making a new game, and opening Worlds with a save code, need to reach our servers.

No. This is a place to learn how games think, not a professional engine — there is no export to a standalone app, and there is no plan for one.