About BubbleTots
Push-your-luck — keep drawing for more, but risk losing some of what you gathered — is one of the great board-game feelings (think Quacks of Quedlinburg). It usually starts at age 10+. BubbleTots brings it to ages 3–5 with the simplest, kindest version: draw bubbles to fill a potion, and decide “one more, or pour it in?”
One more, or pour it in?
Each bubble you draw adds to your potion for this round. You can pour them in to keep them safe whenever you like — or draw one more for a little more. That tiny choice is the whole game: risk and reward, felt by a three-year-old.
A pop only spills HALF
Sometimes you draw a 💥 pop. It spills half of this round’s bubbles — never all of them, and never the potion you’ve already poured. So it’s always gentle: you can’t lose the game, only a little of one round.
A bag you can see
The bag is see-through: you can count how many bubbles and how many pops are still inside. So the child sees the chances — the seed of understanding likely and unlikely.
Game weight (measured, not asserted)
We follow one rule across the library: a game’s weight is measured, never guessed. The pips below come from letting the computer play BubbleTots hundreds of times and counting how many choices a turn it holds and how long a round runs — so a grown-up can pick by how much the child has to keep in their head.
Measured over 200 self-play games: about 1.9 choices a turn, ~32 turns long.
What it’s good for (and what we don’t claim)
BubbleTots is gentle practice for making a choice, counting, and getting a feel for chance. It is not a curriculum or a brain-training app, and we make no claim it raises IQ or test scores.
Safe by design
- No losing. A pop costs half of one round; the potion always fills in the end.
- On your device. Nothing is sent anywhere; no account, no sign-in.
- Audio-first, big buttons. Made for a pre-reader — hear what happens, tap big targets.