The team behind Alto’s adventure is launching a new app aimed at children

Best known for sports such as snowman Alto’s Adventure And Skate city, But soon the company will discover a very different scope: a children’s app. Today, the snowman announced the upcoming game Poke poke playroom, Which will launch on the App Store on May 20. It is an engaging, minimalist experience aimed at children between two and six, who have been encouraged to play open-ended through various digital toys. but Pok Pok This is not just an app, it is also the name of a new creative studio separate from Snowman which will obviously focus on creating this type of experience.

Pok Pok Works for many years. It began life as a side project for Esther Hubergetts and Mathews Demath, who were working as artists in Snowman, while also raising two young boys. (Both now work as creative directors and design directors of Pok Pok respectively.) They wanted to find something where they could work together and explore their creativity outside of their day jobs. At the same time, he was seeking information on how to raise two children and how to screw up in a healthy way.

“We wanted him to have something tricky,” Huybreghts says of his youngest child. “When we started looking for an app, we had a high standard that we wanted. We didn’t want anything addictive, or loud and overstimulating. We couldn’t really find anything that was up to our standards so we decided to make something ourselves. “

Photo: poke poke

He showed it to his co-workers, and it was not the focus of a new studio before and eventually becoming a full-time production. “It was immediately interesting,” says Snowman creative director Ryan Cash. Poke poke playroom Many different virtual toys are included, including a simple drawing tool and a board full of fun switches and buttons. For the most part, digital toys are inspired by the real world.

“We wanted to bring open-ended play to an instrument, and most of the toys we loved, in our real playroom, were the same open-endedness for them,” Huyabarghts says. Melissa Cash, co-founder and CEO of Mail Pocket, says that “the choice to be inspired by some of these toys was very deliberate, as these are timeless toys that have been in our lives for generations.” We wanted Pok Pok

She has the same feeling of being a timeless toy that grows with her children. They are designed to reveal more things because your children are more curious. “

This idea of ​​open ended play is main Pok Pok. The game does not have high scores or failed states or many other elements associated with a specific video game. Instead, like a real-world pile of wooden blocks or a bucket full of die-hard cars, everything is left to the player. “The goal starts with the child,” Huybreghts explains. “We don’t tell them what to do. Every game they play is led by them. “

in some ways, Game room The most interesting of things Is not is. There is no in-app purchase to worry about – instead, the game will be available via a 14-day free trial for $ 3.99 per month or $ 29.99 per year through a subscription. And the experience is streamlined so that children can play with it independently. This means there is no tutorial or lesson to travel them, and there is a simple and clear UI where it only taps one or two to get to different locations in the app. “It was a very conscious decision not to have any text, because we wanted an app that was possible,” Huybreghts notes.

Photo: poke poke

The team worked closely with a range of mentors, including educators, early childhood educators, and sensory experts from the US, Canada and Australia, who consulted Game room. In one instance, for example, cues featuring ambiguous text were removed based on the feedback from the mentors, so that young players were not confused while they were learning to recognize letters. “While we have worked very closely with them, they never make a very big criticism of us, which is a bad reflection on us,” Huybreghts says.

Poke poke playroom It will be launched next week, and it is scheduled to continue updating after launch, hence the subscription. This means adding more elements to existing toys, as well as introducing new ones. Even after these expansions, the target remains relatively small and accessible. Melissa Cash says, “We don’t want to give children the problem of Netflix, where you just go scrolling and scrolling and you go to bed because you can’t see what to watch.”

Cash notes that “a large part of our work begins when we launch,” as the team hopes to make changes and additions based on players’ feedback. But for the launch of Huybreghts and Demaeght, Game room Also marks the end of an unexpected journey. What started as a quest to build an app to keep its own family occupied has turned into a brand-new company and commercial product.

“It was never such a big-budget project,” Huybreghts says. “If I had known, I would have connected people with eyebrows and noses.”