On the theater stage, puppets hang from strings. Pull an arm and the whole body answers. Play the show back and you hear your child's voice.
Every joint has its own spring, the way a wooden marionette does. A show opens with three bells, and when it ends the audience applauds, the puppets bow, and the credits roll with a portrait of everyone in it.
The play belongs to your child: your child works the puppets, does all the voices, and names the theater on the sign. Nothing can be lost, nothing runs out, and there are no scores – the stars your child finds while playing only light the way to the next place on the map. And your child is never asked to buy anything — the one buy button sits behind a parental gate.
ON STAGE
One tap and a puppet dances. Your child pulls an arm, a leg, or the whole puppet across the stage. Lifted by one foot it hangs upside down, and every character takes that differently. A finger held still on a puppet opens a ring of tricks and faces: laugh, cry, sleep, sneeze, turn a somersault. The stage tracks every finger, so two children can each hold a puppet.
The characters notice one another. The wolf follows the ballerina. The ghost hides behind the dragon when the thunder starts. When one puppet dances, the others bounce along.
The props answer too, and answer differently in the dark, in the cold, underwater and on the moon. A ball that lands on the trampoline starts bouncing on its own; a teddy carried to the bed gets tucked in.
THINGS TO FIND
The theater does not explain most of what it can do. Instead a little prompter turns up and mimes one idea at a time — for the four-year-old who cannot read yet — and only something that would work right now. On the moon it mimes something else.
RECORD A SHOW
Your child taps Record, plays with the puppets and tells the story at the same time. On playback the theater puts the right puppets back in the right world and runs it again. The voice can come out squeaky, deep or like a robot. The recording stays on the device and is never uploaded. Story cards offer an idea when imagination stalls: "The dragon has hiccups and can't stop…"
THE PUPPET WORKSHOP
Your child builds their own puppets: head, body shape, clothes, hat, hairstyle, pattern, something on the back. Mix the parts any way you like. The extras include a backpack, a pair of wings, a hearing aid and a cane, and there are ten skin tones. A face can come from the camera or your photo library; it never leaves the device. The finished puppet gets a name and moves into the Puppet Box.
WHAT IS IN THE THEATER
· A 3D map that grows one place at a time, from the theater to the spaceship
· The Playground with hide and seek, Grandma's Attic and 13 world games, from washing to snowballs
· A spaceship with five rooms, all eight solar system planets, a taste scanner and teleporting between bridge and cabin
· Backdrops, sound effects, music loops and a playable xylophone
· Story cards, puppet actions, expressions and narrator voices
· 14 languages
WHAT YOU GET
Play for free with a selection of puppets, props and story cards, one puppet of your own from the workshop, the farm, every backdrop and sound, and recording and playback. One purchase unlocks the rest: more puppets of your own, other characters, worlds and props, more story cards, and painting your own backdrop. The purchase sits behind a parental gate with a math question for an adult. Your child discovers the worlds one at a time by playing. The Halloween costumes are a separate small pack.
No subscription, no ads, no third-party code, no tracking across apps. The app sends anonymous usage statistics – which parts of the theater get played with – to our own server: no names, recordings or photos, and nothing that identifies the child or the device. Playing needs no internet connection; only the purchase does.
With VoiceOver, each puppet is announced by name and a double tap opens its ring of actions and expressions.
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