Special Interest
NexusForge
Build and manage interconnected systems where actions cascade across ecology, economy, health, and policy. First gamified systems thinking app for ages 9-14.
▶ 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 Mesh
#FFA726 NexusForge is a systems thinking simulator where everything is connected! Build ecosystems, manage cities, or run economies and watch how one change ripples through the whole system. Add more wolves to a forest and see what happens to the deer, the grass, and the rivers. It is like playing with a giant web of cause and effect.
Characters who teach
Meet the cast
NexusForge's characters each teach one idea about how systems work. Tie names exactly how one thing affects another, Spiral shows loops that keep growing, Damp shows loops that keep things steady, Emerge shows patterns that come from simple rules working together, and Steer looks for the small push that changes a lot. Amass, Lag, Topple, Yon, and Snare cover build-up over time, delays, tipping points, where a system ends, and common traps. Mesh is the mentor who guides them.
Tie
Connection / link — name the MECHANISM before drawing the line; refuse vague-correlation framings
Read chapter →
Spiral
Reinforcing feedback — spirals grow good OR bad until something stops them; always ask 'what stops it?'
Read chapter →
Damp
Balancing feedback — this loop is PROTECTING what the system tries to keep stable; what is it protecting?
Read chapter →
Emerge
Emergence — the pattern isn't in any single rule; it appears FROM the rules running together
Read chapter →
Steer
Leverage points — the biggest leverage is usually the LEAST obvious place to push (Meadows)
Read chapter →
Amass
Stocks vs flows / accumulation
Read chapter →
Lag
Delays
Read chapter →
Topple
Tipping points / nonlinearity
Read chapter →
Yon
System boundary
Read chapter →
Snare
System traps / archetypes
Read chapter →
Browse all chapters → · What's distributed-narrative methodology? →
What's inside
System Builder
Create your own system by placing nodes (like "wolves," "grass," or "temperature") and drawing connections between them. Each connection shows how one thing aff
Simulation Mode
Press play and watch your system come alive! Nodes grow and shrink based on their connections. Adjust a variable and see how changes cascade through the whole s
Scenario Challenges
Tackle real-world scenarios. What happens to a city when the population doubles? How does pollution affect a lake ecosystem? Solve these challenges by understan
Causal Loop Diagrams
Draw feedback loops to show how systems reinforce or balance themselves. A reinforcing loop makes things grow faster and faster. A balancing loop keeps things s
Mentored by Mesh — on-device AI, no data leaves the device.
How NexusForge 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
For you, the grown-up
Spark & Whetstone, our free site for grown-ups, tells what NexusForge teaches in a short course of its own.
NexusForge 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
NexusForge 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
