For grown-ups
RoofPals is about materials that behave like themselves. A neighbour arrives with three needs shown as pictures: stay dry, stay warm, have light to read by. Your child builds a small house on a grid from five materials. Each has only two or three true properties: wood is light and spans a gap, stone is strong and heavy, mud brick keeps heat in but softens in rain unless a roof covers it, glass lets light through, and thatch sheds rain.
Nothing goes wrong on its own. When your child is ready, they ring the bell for rain, wind or night and watch what the house does: where the water comes in, which wall shakes, where the lamplight falls. Then they fix it and ring again. That is engineering: build, test, fix.
Play it together. One of you builds and the other is the inspector who rings the bell. Then build the same house from cardboard boxes and a towel roof, and pour a cup of water over it outside.
Each neighbour brings a building idea from somewhere in the world: a house on stilts above flood water, thick earth walls against desert heat, a steep thatched roof for heavy rain. The finished house can move into your family's Hometown, kept on this device.
What it never does
- No accounts, no ads, no tracking — anything kept stays on this device.
- No streaks, timers to beat, points to chase or leaderboards.
- No chat, and nothing anyone types is sent anywhere.