STEAM
CraftForge
Virtual miniature painting and model-building that teaches color theory, brush techniques, and material science at micro scale. Players learn complementary/analogous/triadic color schemes, practice basecoating, washing, drybrushing, highlighting, and blending techniques, and explore the chemistry of acrylic, enamel, and oil paints.
▶ Play it nowBuilt for sittings of about 20 minutes on the screen. That is our design budget, not a measurement.
Meet your mentor
Every Spark & Anvil app has a friendly mentor character that demonstrates, asks, and patiently scaffolds learning. On-device AI personalizes the mentor's responses to your kid's progress — never connecting to a server, never collecting data.
Mentored by Iris
#E91E63 Characters who teach
Meet the cast
Each character in CraftForge is one stage of painting a miniature: preparing the surface, the first coat and wash, mixing colors, building layers, and fine detail, plus dry-brushing, patterns, weathering, bases and color harmony. Iris introduces each one, and a messy work in progress is part of the craft, not a mistake.
Sand
Surface preparation — the patient old pangolin who treats priming as the invisible foundation everything else stands on ('ready surface first; the paint listens to the surface')
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Dab
Basecoat + wash — the confident vole of broad strokes who treats basecoats as the loud first hello and washes as the quiet shadow-finder ('big shapes first, shadows fall second')
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Blend
Color mixing + highlighting — the chameleon of color-vocabulary who treats color theory as language, not rulebook ('two colors meet, a third is born — mix slow; listen to what they're making')
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Coat
Layered application + varnish — the steady badger who treats every coat as deliberate next-stratum patience ('layer waits for layer; patience is the secret pigment')
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Tip
Fine detail + freehand — the relaxed treefrog of fearless small-brush play who keeps things loose and calm ('tiny brushes, loose wrist — wobbly is fine; the eye fixes it from arm's length')
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Bristle
Dry-brushing — take the paint away, then the little that's left catches the raised edges
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Chequer
Pattern work — find the one small unit, then repeat it faithfully; the pattern lives in the repeat, not the piece
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Patina
Weathering — a too-clean model looks fake; add the marks of use (rust, chips, dust, wear) and it earns a history
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Plinth
Basing — a model needs a place to stand; build the little ground and the figure gains a world, a scale, and a story
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Prism
Color harmony — colors don't work alone; put opposites side by side and both catch fire, keep the family warm or cool so it sings
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Browse all chapters → · What's distributed-narrative methodology? →
What's inside
Learning goal
Virtual miniature painting and model-building that teaches color theory, brush techniques, and material science at micro scale. Players learn complementary/analogous/triadic color schemes, practice basecoating, washing, drybrushing, highlighting, and blending techniques, and explore the chemistry of acrylic, enamel, and oil paints.
Question kits
16 curriculum-aligned question kits, 400 questions in all, mapped to recognized standards.
On-device AI mentor
FoundationModels-powered hints, feedback, and adaptive difficulty — all running locally.
Mentored by Iris — on-device AI, no data leaves the device.
How CraftForge handles your kid's data
- ✅ All progress, settings, and AI-generated content stays on the device
- ✅ No analytics, no tracking, no third-party SDKs
- ✅ Free — no ads, no in-app purchases
- ✅ No personal information collected from children — in line with COPPA (updated by the 2026 FTC amendments)
- ✅ No chat with strangers — play-together rooms use a short code and preset emotes, never typed messages
CraftForge runs on ForgeKit — the open-source Swift Package Manager framework that powers every Spark & Anvil app. ForgeKit ensures consistent accessibility, COPPA compliance, and design language across the portfolio, so your kid's progress and preferences feel coherent across every app they touch.
Coming to the App Store
CraftForge is in active development. Email us to hear when it ships — no marketing, no spam, just a one-shot launch announcement.
Email me at launch
