How old before a child can play alone on a tablet?
Parents ask us this constantly. The honest answer is that age is the wrong question — a four-year-old cannot play most "ages 3+" games alone, and a well-built one can be played alone at two and a half.
The moment an adult has to step in
Watch a small child with a tablet and you will see exactly where they get stuck. It is almost never the game itself. It is a menu with five choices, a settings gear, a pop-up asking something, or a screen that says Tap here to continue to someone who cannot read.
The game is fine. Everything around the game is the problem.
Four things that decide it
Nothing to read. A child of three does not read, and a child of five reads too slowly for a button label to be useful. If any step needs words, an adult is needed forever.
One thing on screen at a time. Two choices are a decision. Six choices are a wall. Our level map shows one obvious button — the level to play — and everything else is scenery.
No way to get lost. There must be no screen a child can reach and not escape. Every screen in our games has exactly one way back, always in the same corner.
No way to fail badly. A child who loses and does not understand why will hand you the tablet. That is the end of playing alone.
What to test in two minutes, before you buy anything
Open the game and hand it over without saying a word. Then watch for four things:
Does the child reach the actual game within ten seconds? Do they ever look up at you? Can they get out of a screen they did not mean to open? And when something goes wrong, do they carry on or do they stop?
Two minutes of silence tells you more than any age rating on the store page.
Why we build this way
Every game we make is tested the same way: an adult hands the tablet over and says nothing. If we have to explain, the screen is wrong and we change the screen, not the explanation.
It is a demanding rule. It also means a parent can hand over a tablet and actually sit down.