TheMoai

The Moai is an app that brings together two toys that even small children who can't read yet can play with on their own. There's no need to read instructions on how to play. Touch anywhere on the screen, and something will always move. Whether it's a parent and child together, or a child playing alone — this was made to be a toy you can quietly keep touching for a while. ■ Elevator Operate an elevator in a building with floors 1 through 5. Press the "up" or "down" button on your current floor, and the car comes to pick you up. People are waiting on other floors too, and the elevator doesn't jump straight to whichever floor you pressed. It picks up waiting people in order, going up floor by floor, then coming back down floor by floor. Anyone passed by on the way up gets picked up on the way down. Just by watching which floor it's on now and which direction it's headed next, the ideas of sequence and direction come across naturally. Tap a floor to change where you're standing, too. When the doors open, you can see the bear riding inside. ■ Emoji Pool 70 emoji fall from the sky. A watermelon is big, a soap bubble is small — each rolls and piles up at its own true size, forming a bumpy, uneven mountain that could never happen if all the balls were the same size. Tap the screen and the emoji around it burst outward. Hit a pinwheel floating in the air and its blades spin. Hit it in the center and it barely moves, but hit the tip of a blade and it spins hard. Playing with it, you start to notice how the result changes depending on where you hit. Tilt the device and the direction things fall changes. Turn it on its side, and the pile that's built up collapses sideways too. Press "shake again" and everything falls from the sky once more. ■ For handing to small children All text on screen is in hiragana — no kanji, no English. No ads are shown at all. There are no in-app purchases. No account registration or login is required. It doesn't connect to the internet — it runs entirely on the device. It doesn't collect any personal information, nor send anything outside. There are no buttons that cause trouble if pressed. Close it, and next time you open it, you can play again from the start.