Games built to be finished and put down.
No next puzzle starts by itself, and nothing here is paid for by your child's attention.
- No points, scores or leaderboards — the satisfaction is their own
- No adverts, nothing to buy inside, and nobody who can reach your child
- Thinking games and a drawing Studio, on three shelves
- A PIN-locked grown-ups' room, and a report in plain English — never a score
A rotating panel showing the library screen, three pictures made in the drawing Studio, and what the subscription costs.
Made for
- children
- grown-ups
- memory, later in life
- home
- school in design
- learning
- fun
What the peer-reviewed research shows
Expected rewards reduce children's later interest in activities they already enjoyed — the “overjustification effect”.
Lepper, Greene & Nisbett, 1973, and five decades of follow-up
Cool blue-green rooms improved attention and memory compared with warm-hued ones.
Llinares, Higuera-Trujillo & Serra, Building & Environment, 2021 — 160 people across 24 virtual classroom settings
Classroom design explains around 16% of the variation in how much pupils progress in a year.
Barrett et al., Building & Environment, 2015 — 153 UK classrooms, 3,766 pupils
Read the research behind Pomble → We describe published research. We are not affiliated with any of these researchers, and none has endorsed this product.
What's inside
Familiar games, rebuilt so they give something back.
The puzzles children already reach for — with everything that makes them hard to put down taken out.
We didn’t invent new games. We rebuilt the number puzzles, the block-fitting, the word searches and the picture-matching from scratch: keeping what makes them satisfying, and removing the machinery that keeps a child there. Each one names the thinking it asks for, so a quiet half hour is doing something.
Most children's apps earn their money from attention, so they are built to be hard to leave. This one earns its money from you, once a month — which is exactly what makes it possible to build something a child can finish and walk away from.
What we cut out, and why
- No points, scores or stars. A score quickly becomes the reason to play, and then the only reason.
- No streaks. Nothing that punishes a day off, or a week in hospital.
- No leaderboards. Nobody is ever measured against anybody else.
- No adverts. Children's attention is not ours to sell.
- Nothing to buy inside. You have already paid. That is the whole deal.
- No chat and no messages. Nobody can reach your child in here.
- No timer counting down. Thinking is not a race.
Who it's for
Three shelves, one household.
Everyone has their own profile and their own library, so nobody opens something that isn't theirs.
Children
Puzzles that ask for noticing and patience rather than speed. Nothing here is a test, and nothing keeps score.
Patchwork · Make Ten · Meadow · Word Search · the Studio
Grown-ups
The harder end of the same library — a proper sudoku, a codeword — for the fifteen minutes at the end of the day that are actually yours. Same subscription, no extra account.
Sudoku · Codeword · Word Forge · Dominoes
Grandparents
Larger type, self-paced, no clock anywhere. Built for keeping a hand in, not for being measured.
Word Recall · Pairs · Order Trail
The price, in full.
Every game, every library, everyone in the house. The first week is free. After that it is £6.99 a month for up to four people — or £59.99 for the year, which works out at £5 a month. Each extra person is £1 a month, or £10 for the year.
There is nothing else to pay, and nothing inside to buy. Cancel whenever you like — nothing is taken away that you made.
Payments are switched off while we test with families — nothing is charged