Description
KeyPip is a spelling game played at a keyboard. It says a word out loud, your child types it, and every single letter answers back.
MADE FOR A REAL KEYBOARD
A Mac, or an iPad with a keyboard attached, is where KeyPip is happiest: a child's own hands on real keys, hunting down the letter they just heard. There is nothing to set up and nothing to connect. Type, and the game answers in the same instant. It works on an iPhone too, and on an iPad by itself, where the letters come up on screen instead.
THE KEYBOARD ON SCREEN IS THE REAL ONE
When KeyPip draws a keyboard, it draws the board your child's language actually uses: QWERTY where they will meet QWERTY, the Hungarian ISO layout where they will meet that, down to the way each row sits a quarter of a key to the right of the one above. So the hunting they do on screen is the hunting they will do on real keys. There are three sizes: ten big letters for a child starting out, the whole board for a child ready for it, and none at all when a real keyboard is doing the work.
HEAR IT, TYPE IT, WALK IT
KeyPip reads a word aloud, and will read it again as many times as your child asks, so no reading skill is needed to start. Every key is answered in the same instant: the letter takes its colour, its little eyes open, and a pop sounds a note higher than the one before it. When a word is finished, Pip the crocodile walks a step further along the star trail. At the end of a round a sticker goes into the book, and it stays there.
THE LETTERS ARE ALIVE
Chunky rounded letters with tiny eyes that blink on their own clocks. The letter in play looks around. None of them are pictures: they are drawn live, so they breathe, react and carry their card across the word.
IT MEETS THE CHILD WHERE THEY ARE
Two ways to play. "I can see" shows the letters, so the game is about finding them on the keyboard. "I listen" hides them, so the word has to be heard and spelled. Words arrive in themed sets, from short one-beat words up to longer ones, and KeyPip quietly notices which letters and which words are hard and brings them back more often. Lowercase play is there for a child who is ready for it.
THREE LANGUAGES, PROPERLY
English, Swedish and Hungarian, each with its own words, its own voice, its own alphabet and its own keyboard layout. Hungarian digraphs are treated as the single letters they are.
WHAT IT DOES NOT DO
No adverts, of any kind, anywhere in the app.
No accounts, no sign-in, no email address to hand over.
No analytics and no tracking.
Nothing leaves the device. Names, progress and stickers stay on it.
No in-app purchases and no subscriptions.
It works with no internet connection at all.
Grown-ups settings sit behind a gate a small child will not get through.
Several children can share one device, each with their own name, their own progress and their own sticker book.
A FLOOR IT WILL NOT DROP BELOW
VoiceOver throughout, Reduce Motion honoured, every screen playable from the keyboard alone, 44 pt targets, and colour is never the only thing carrying a meaning.
One purchase covers Mac, iPad and iPhone.
