Match & Spot: Memory Match

A child taps the first stone on a winding path and lands in the Meadow. Two cards turn over. Further along there is a Town, a Kitchen where something on the counter has shifted since last time, and three more worlds after that. A fox sits on the stone ahead, so nobody ever has to be asked what to play next.

Six kinds of looking share those six worlds. Cards turn face up two at a time until the pairs are gone. Two drawings sit side by side with three to eight quiet changes between them. A whole tray of objects has to be found inside one picture. A shadow needs the shape that cast it. A card leaves the table while nobody is watching. One picture in a row does not belong with the rest.

The pictures come from six packs drawn by hand for this game — animals, things that go, food, nature, letters and numbers — and every pack runs through every activity. Moving from one to the next means nothing new to learn, only new things to look at.

Finishing a level fills its slot in that pack's sticker album. Finishing a world hands over a sticker of its own, and twenty-one badges wait on a wall. Nothing on that wall can be bought, traded or lost.

Nothing here hurries anybody. A wrong tap does nothing at all — no penalty, no failure sound, no progress taken back — and no timer runs at all unless a grown-up turns one on. Hints circle and highlight rather than explain, so a four-year-old who does not read yet gets exactly the help a nine-year-old gets. Buttons are large and carry pictures instead of words.

Grown-ups get a page of their own behind a gate: room for four children on one device, each with a separate path and album, and a quiet summary of what each one has been playing. The same gate stands in front of settings and every link that leaves the app.

It runs with the phone in airplane mode, from the first launch onward. It asks for no name, no email and no account, and collects nothing about a child, so nothing about a child can leave the device.

One price, paid once. Every world, every pack and every level is there the first time it opens, with no advertising in it and nothing inside it to buy.

ON IPHONE AND IPAD
• Built for both — tabs on iPhone, a sidebar beside the levels on iPad
• On iPhone Duo, open it for the tablet layout on the inner display; close it and the round continues on the cover screen
• Turn it any way round; the layout follows
• A dark theme that follows your device, while the pictures keep their true colours
• Honours Reduce Motion and Increase Contrast, and the text grows with your text-size setting