For parents
What age is Storyball for?
Storyball is made for roughly ages four to nine. A four-year-old plays the movement games and listens to the stories; an eight-year-old works through the quests, chases the medals and runs the group games for younger siblings. The app is rated 4+ and has no chat, no feed and nothing public in it.
At four and five
The appeal is immediate and physical: it talks, it lights up, it buzzes when you shake it. The games that land are the simple loops — freeze when the music stops, shake until it says stop, throw it and catch it.
Reading is not required anywhere. Everything a child needs to know is said out loud.
At six to nine
The quests start to matter. There is a map with levels on it, medals to collect, a score that goes up, and a reason to come back to the same character across weeks rather than minutes.
This is also the age where children start running the group games themselves — handing the ball round a circle, keeping their own score, inventing rules that are not in it.
More than one child
The app keeps a profile per child, so progress, medals and playtime are counted separately even though there is one ball. Switching between them is one tap on the who's-playing screen.
Several of the games are written for a group rather than for one child, which is the case a single-player toy usually handles badly.
Storyball is our answer to this
A screen-free ball that children have to move to play. The app is free and pairs it in about a minute.
Free. No account, no in-app purchases, nothing collected about your child.