Jigsaw Adventures — Kids

Jigsaw Adventures is four hundred painted jigsaw puzzles for children aged three to eight, gathered into ten worlds: space, under the sea, the land of the dinosaurs, the safari, the farm, a pirate harbour, a castle with its dragon, the frozen north, a building site and the zoo. Each world is a wall of forty pictures. A child picks the picture, not a number, then chooses how many pieces to cut it into, from two big ones to twenty-four tricky ones.

Every piece count earns its own badge on that picture: a star for two, four and six pieces, and a bronze, silver and gold trophy for nine, twelve and twenty-four. A picture solved at six and again at twenty-four wears three stars and a gold cup, and the two empty cups in between are the invitation to come back. Nothing is scored and nothing is timed. The pieces are chunky, they snap kindly into place, and a piece that misses floats back to the tray.

When the last piece lands the scene comes alive and two or three discoveries light up on it: a word and one true fact, read aloud in a warm voice. The rocket needs its flames to escape Earth's pull, the robot rover drives on Mars and sends pictures home, and Saturn is so light it would float in a giant bath. There are more than eight hundred of them across the ten worlds.

Every finished picture also becomes a postcard in the child's own album, and the postcard grows whenever the picture is solved with more pieces. Point the camera at a toy or the family dog and that becomes a puzzle too, up to twelve of them, stored only on this device and never uploaded. The camera opens only behind the grown-ups' gate.

The app is a small download. Five pictures from each world are inside it; the other thirty-five arrive on their own in the background soon after installing, world by world, and a picture simply wakes up when its world has landed. After that everything works without a connection.

Behind the grown-ups' gate a parent can cap the biggest piece count until small hands are ready, set a daily screen-time limit and read the play chart, pick one of twelve calm tunes in four sets, and switch the spoken discoveries and the little snap sounds on or off. There is no advertising, nothing to buy, no account to make, and nothing leaves the device.

Made for phones and tablets alike, in landscape, by Potpourri Apps.

Recent changes:
Every world now has forty pictures, four hundred puzzles in all, shown as a picture wall with a star or trophy for each piece count you solve. More than eight hundred spoken discoveries. The app is a much smaller download: five pictures per world are inside it and the rest arrive on their own after installing.