Playing DeckPals together 🫙
DeckPals is a build-your-own-bag game for ages 6–8. It’s the grown-up hobby of deck-building (think of games like Dominion) shrunk to something a six-year-old can hold — and it does one thing those big games can’t: your bag is a see-through jar, so the child watches the odds change as they build. The big idea: the bag you build is the hands you’ll draw.
1 · Look in the jar
Corvi’s jar starts with a few weak tokens — 7 plain pebbles 🔘 (worth 1) and 3 acorns 🌰 (worth 2). The jar is always open on screen, and beside each kind it says how many of the tokens that can come next are that kind — “next draw: 3 of 10.” A token you just bought waits until Jarra shakes the jar. Talk about it: “which will we pull most?”
2 · Guess, then draw
Before drawing, the child guesses how much shine the next 5 tokens will add up to (predict-before-reveal — the single best-evidenced move in the app). Then tap Draw 5 and see how close the guess was.
3 · Make the jar better
Now the choice that IS the lesson: buy a shiny token you can afford (a star 🌟 or gem 💎 — it drops into the jar and you’ll draw it later), or send a pebble back to the river (it leaves this jar for the rest of the game). Either way, watch the jar above — the counts and the “1 in N” numbers just changed. That’s composition-probability: adding a card shifts the odds of every future draw; removing a plain one lifts them.
4 · Chase a big hand
Draw a hand worth 12 shine in one turn to win the jar. You can’t get there with pebbles — you have to build. When the win comes, the child feels why the bag they made mattered.
No timers, no streaks, no score to chase, and nothing to buy with money. Buying is the mechanic, paid with the shine you draw — never a reward economy. On-device — nothing leaves your device.