Number Friends

Number Friends is six little counting games for children who are just starting to work out what numbers mean — roughly ages three to five. Count the bears. Put four donuts on Momo’s plate. Get three more ducks onto the bus and say how many are riding. Every game is the same shape: a friendly voice asks for something, your child taps, and the answer is a number they can see as well as hear. Six games, one idea at a time. Count Them! — how many are there? Tap each one and count along. Which Has More? — bigger and smaller, before any arithmetic at all. Snack Plate — count out exactly what a friend asked for. Bus Stop — animals get on and off. Adding and taking away. Frog Pond — hop forward along the numbers. Rocket Launch — counting down, and taking away. It listens to how it’s going. Early rounds count to five and never subtract. As your child gets them right the numbers grow and the sums arrive; a run of misses walks it back down again. Nobody is stuck, and nobody is asked for arithmetic before they can count. A real voice, not a robot. Every line in the game is recorded — 974 of them. She counts aloud with your child, names the friends, and says the sum back once it’s solved. Nothing is read out by the phone’s text-to-speech. Eight friends to meet. Bruno, Bibi, Hoppy, Dilly, Pip, Momo, Rusty and Pearl each turn up when enough stars have been earned, and each has a snack they love. Stars are an abstraction; two more stars and a new duck comes out of the shadow is a reason to play one more round. What it doesn’t do No ads. No in-app purchases. No accounts, no sign-in, no email address. No videos, no links out, nothing to buy and nowhere to wander off to.