Whirlpool Gobble: 2 Player

Put one phone between two players. The screen is one sandy beach table: the bottom half belongs to one player, the top half to the other. There are no turns. Both of you play at the same time, steering your own whirlpool with a single thumb. A whirlpool gobbles up anything smaller than itself: shells, pebbles, sandcastle bits, rubber ducks. Every gulp makes it grow, and the bigger it gets, the bigger the things it can swallow. But it can never swallow something bigger than itself. Watch out for the purple spiky sea urchins! Swallow one and your whirlpool shrinks while the urchin pops right back out. The skill is reading the pile, not just eating everything. A big duck sits in the middle, and both of you want it. A whirlpool that is big enough to swallow it glows gold and wears a little crown, while the other one breaks into a nervous sweat. If the duck is wobbling on the rim and a bigger whirlpool gets close, it tips over to the bigger one. A round ends when nothing edible is left or time runs out, and the bigger whirlpool wins. Win two rounds out of three to win the match. ■ Nothing to read There is no text anywhere on the screen. While you are new to it an arrow shows how to drag, and who is winning is something you can see: it is whoever is bigger. A seven-year-old can play the first round without an adult. ■ Playing alone Open it alone and a ghost whirlpool plays the other side, picking its snacks like a person and sometimes swallowing an urchin by mistake. The moment someone touches the top half, the ghost disappears and that person becomes player two. ■ For parents · No ads · Nothing to buy inside the app · Sends and receives nothing over the internet. No account · No contact with strangers — no chat, no leaderboards · Not a single text field anywhere in the app · The app asks for no permissions. The sounds are made by the app itself