A quick look into the current mobile games aimed at children

Next week Yle is hosting Pikku Kakkonen Game Jam at Mediapolis (Finnish kids TV show). I'll be participating in that as a designer so I thought it would be nice to take a quick look at what kind of mobile games are made for kids nowadays.

The first list I read was 30 of the best Android games for kids between the ages of 2-8 that was created last year so the games are relatively new. There are a few things that most of the games in the list have in common:

1. Very easy controls (usually involves only tapping)
2. Mostly animal themed characters
3. Doing stupid things
4. Many educational games
5. No IAP / Ads (in most cases, looking at you Disney..)
6. Destroying things

Many of these games also had an upfront cost that is rare to see in other mobile market. I guess that's due to parents finding them and rather paying 1-3€ than having the game infected by ads or IAPs.

The most popular game in list with 50+ million downloads "Toca Kitchen 2"

The other list was the official Pikku Kakkonen Games list. These games are played as mini games inside the official app. There is also a website that has archived all the previous games. What stood about these was that most of them are 2D games and don't really offer any unique features on the first glance.

Example of a minigame from Pikku Kakkonen app

The website itself was pretty well designed with lots of interactive elements that make sounds or play some kind of animation. The buttons itself first played a video explaining what is behind them that is something I haven't seen elsewhere.

Overall I think the games aimed at children don't receive that big of a budget due to them not being very profitable. There are a few exceptions to this, especially the ones that are made by big companies like Disney but those games usually involve either ads, IAPs or both.

When designing something that  is supposed to be played by kids younger than 8 it's important to keep in mind that it needs to be super simple and engaging, otherwise the player might feel overwhelmed or bored and end up losing interest. Another way to make the games more engaging is adding seemingly useless things like interactive objects that don't necessarily add anything to the core game play but makes the games more immersive.