Academics
TileTales
Dominoes as number sense — read the pips at a glance, add the open ends to a multiple of five to score. Race a graded bot or a friend on this device to 61 over a few hands, or play a friend online one Block hand at a time.
▶ 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 Nana Fives
#8f6b4d Characters who teach
Meet the cast
Match Mateo
Matching ends: you may only add a tile whose end equals a number already open
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Double Dev
Doubles and the spinner: a double is played crossways and opens new arms
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Block Bianca
Blocking: steering the open ends so the opponent has no legal play
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Draw Dilan
The boneyard: when you can't match, you draw a tile or pass
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Count Bello
Pip-counting and subitizing: reading a tile's value at a glance
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Fiver Odalys
All-fives scoring: land the open-ends total on a multiple of five
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Threes Thandi
Multiples of three: scoring on multiples of 3 (and on both 3 and 5)
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Shed Sunil
Shedding to win: be first to play every tile and call 'domino!'
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Tally Tunde
End-of-round counting-out: tally the pips left in hands, rounded to the nearest 5
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Train Tomás
Mexican train: grow a personal train off the central hub
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Chicken Cheo
Chickenfoot branching: a double must sprout three branches before play continues
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Browse all chapters → · What's distributed-narrative methodology? →
What's inside
Learning goal
Dominoes as number sense — read the pips at a glance, add the open ends to a multiple of five to score. Race a graded bot or a friend on this device to 61 over a few hands, or play a friend online one Block hand at a time.
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 Nana Fives — on-device AI, no data leaves the device.
How TileTales 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
TileTales 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
TileTales 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