Comparison

Monster Mingle vs Light & Color by Tinybop

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Monster Mingle

Design and build your own unique, friendly monster by combining various body parts. Explore magical islands, discover creatures, and interact with the environment in a free-play imaginative landscape. This app encourages creativity and exploration without any goals or objectives.

Highlights
  • Combine diverse body parts (eyes, mouths, limbs, wings, etc.)
  • Explore land, sea, and sky environments
  • Discover and interact with creatures
  • Feed your monster
  • Free play sandbox environment
Currently charting
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Build your own friendly monster! Choose different body parts to help explore the world and uncover each unique island. Discover fun creatures, musical scenery and hidden surprises as your monster plays in this magical kingdom. A free play imaginative landscape helps children to be creative, building the creatures they want and learning what is needed to fly high, swim fast or simply walk around. Can you find all 40 body parts? Features: - Combine different eyes, mouths, noses, beaks, arms, legs, wings, fins, horns and bodies - Hop and walk on land, swim under the sea or fly in the sky - Find food to feed your hungry monster - Talk and sing to the other creatures - No goals or objectives, just a free play sandbox Child friendly app: - No in-app purchases - No third-party advertising - No social media Created by Cowly Owl, a British micro-studio creating playful digital toys and educational games. http://www.cowlyowl.com/

About

Light & Color by Tinybop

Explore the science and art of light and color through interactive experiments and AR features. Discover how light works, mix colors, and see the world through different creatures' eyes. Designed for curious kids ages 4+.

Highlights
  • Explore light refraction and reflection
  • Experiment with prisms, mirrors, and lenses
  • Mix paint and light colors
  • Create rainbows
  • Use AR to identify colors
  • See through animal eyes
  • Interactive vocabulary in 40+ languages
Features
Currently charting
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Have you dreamed of entering a rainbow? How about collecting the colors in your room or seeing through the eyes of a bee? Explore the magic of light and color as you learn at the intersection of physics and art.  **2022 Winner of Japan's Digital Ehon Yoichi Sakakihara Prize for outstanding children's media! Discover how light is made, how it moves, and the beauty it creates (hint: colors!). You can mix paint and light, play with prisms and lenses, sort colors, make rainbows, and so much more. Plus — use AR to collect and identify the colors all around you. Light & Color is No.12 in Tinybop’s award-winning Explorer’s Library, a series of apps designed for curious kids ages 4+ to dive into big ideas. Other Explorer’s Library apps include The Human Body, Plants, Simple Machines, The Earth, Weather, Homes, Skyscrapers, Space, Mammals, Coral Reef, and States of Matter. The apps in this series have won Best of the App Store, App Store Editors’ Choice, Parents’ Choice, and Children's Technology Review Editor’s Choice awards. Each Explorer’s Library app teaches kids foundational science. Kids learn by playing, experimenting, observing, asking questions, making guesses, and finding answers. We hope each app inspires conversations between you and your kids and sparks more learning in the world around us. Learn more at tinybop.com. FEATURES + Discover how light bounces, refracts and reflects. + Play with working models of prisms, mirrors, and lenses. + Make rainbows by generating storms. + Experiment with a variety of light sources including candles, incandescent lights, and lasers. + Peek inside a raindrop to learn about how rainbows are created. + Mix paints to create a color wheel (Subtractive RYB mixing). + Explore the science of light by mixing colored lights (Additive RGB light mixing). + Play with color sorting blocks to learn about different color systems. + Collect, capture, match, and name colors in the world around you using AR. + Explore how different creatures perceive the world around them (humans, color-blind humans, nearsighted humans, bees, dogs). + Consider the emotions you connect to different colors. + Interactive text labels in 40+ languages teach vocabulary. + Aligns with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). + Fun for the whole family — play and learn together. + No third-party advertising. + Open-ended activities with no rules. Curiosity and creativity are rewarded. + Original artwork by Jeanelle Mak Petrillo. FREE handbook Our expert-reviewed handbook is full of facts, interaction hints, and discussion questions to support learning in this app, in the classroom, or at home. Download in your app or at: http://tinybop.com/handbooks. Privacy Policy We take your and your child’s privacy very seriously. We do not collect or share personal information about your child, nor do we allow any third-party advertising. When the camera, lidar (TrueDepth), microphone, and other services produce data which could identify you used within an app, your information is neither collected nor distributed outside of the app to Tinybop or other parties. Tinybop does collect anonymous usage data that tells us which parts of the app you visit, how often you visit, and which parts of the app you use the most. This anonymous data is accessible only to Tinybop to help us make better apps and is never bought or sold. Read our complete privacy policy at tinybop.com. Tinybop, Inc. is a Brooklyn-based studio of designers, engineers, and artists. We make toys for tomorrow.  We’re all over the internet. Visit us: www.tinybop.com Follow us: twitter.com/tinybop Like us: facebook.com/tinybop Peek behind the scenes: instagram.com/tinybop We love hearing your stories! If you have ideas, or something isn’t working as you expect it to, please contact us: hi@tinybop.com. Psst! It's not Tiny Bop, or Tiny Bob, or Tiny Pop. It's Tinybop. :)

Screenshots

Monster Mingle4 screens
Light & Color by Tinybop4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: Light & Color by Tinybop at 4.5 against Monster Mingle's 4.0. Monster Mingle's advantage is monetization model (free vs paid) and review sentiment (89% vs 71%). On price, ratings volume, update cadence and ads there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Monster Mingle costs $3.99 and Light & Color by Tinybop $3.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Light & Color by Tinybop holds the better App Store score, 4.5 against 4.0. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 28 and 15 respectively. Written reviews complicate that: 89% of Monster Mingle's written reviews are positive against 71% of Light & Color by Tinybop's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Monster Mingle ships an update every 6 months, Light & Color by Tinybop every 8 months. The most recent releases landed on October 26, 2026 and October 25, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 8 level
Monster Mingle versus Light & Color by Tinybop: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterMonster MingleLight & Color by Tinybop
Price$3.99$3.99
Rating4.0 (28 ratings)4.5 (15 ratings) — better
Positive reviews89.2% of reviews — better71.4% of reviews
Number of ratings28 — better15
Update frequencyEvery 6 months — betterEvery 8 months
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFree — betterPaid
Best chart rank#162 — better#176
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS12.011.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size300 MB422 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperCowly Owl LtdTinybop Inc.

Customer experience

Monster Mingle

All ratings28 ratings
Positive75.0%
Neutral10.7%
Negative14.3%
Written reviews37 reviews
Positive89.2%
Neutral2.7%
Negative8.1%

Light & Color by Tinybop

All ratings15 ratings
Positive93.3%
Neutral0.0%
Negative6.7%
Written reviews7 reviews
Positive71.4%
Neutral14.3%
Negative14.3%

In-app purchases

None

Monster Mingle

No in-app purchases

None

Light & Color by Tinybop

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Monster Mingle free?
Monster Mingle costs $3.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Light & Color by Tinybop free?
Light & Color by Tinybop costs $3.99, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Monster Mingle or Light & Color by Tinybop?
Light & Color by Tinybop is rated higher. Monster Mingle averages 4.0 out of 5 from 28 ratings, while Light & Color by Tinybop averages 4.5 from 15 ratings.
Do Monster Mingle or Light & Color by Tinybop have ads?
Neither Monster Mingle nor Light & Color by Tinybop shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Monster Mingle or Light & Color by Tinybop?
Monster Mingle ships an update every 6 months, and Light & Color by Tinybop every 8 months. Most recently, Monster Mingle was updated on October 26, 2026 and Light & Color by Tinybop on October 25, 2026.
Which is more popular, Monster Mingle or Light & Color by Tinybop?
Monster Mingle currently peaks at #162 in the App Store charts, and Light & Color by Tinybop at #176. Chart position reflects recent download velocity rather than total install base.

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