Memory Zoo

Memory Zoo is a gentle memory game for children from four to ten, set in a sunny zoo full of hand-drawn animals. Thirty friendly faces live here, from a lion with a curly mane and a trumpeting elephant to a hooting owl, a penguin, a koala and a busy bee, and every one of them has its own call made in code: a roar, a moo, a quack, a hiss, a little chirp. Children choose 4+, 6+ or 8+ with one big button, and each age gets its own board sizes and pace. No reading is needed anywhere: the first time a game appears, a friendly animated hand shows how it works.

A round is ten quick exercises that mix six kinds of memory play. Classic pairs grow from six big cards to twenty. Sound pairs play a call and ask which animal made it. In Who was here, a few animals peek out and then hide behind the bushes, and the brain has to remember who was there. Animals are taken home to the ice, the tree or the pond, older children repeat a Simon-style sequence of animal calls that grows to six, and in every set of four one animal is the odd one out. Each exercise is built from a seed with exactly one right answer, and the wrong choices are always clearly different.

Nothing can be lost. There is no timer, a wrong card wobbles and turns back with a soft sound, the right one glows after two tries, and matched animals do a little dance. Every finished round adds a sticker to the sticker book, and the daily round gives a golden sticker of the day. Gentle music-box sounds and no time pressure make it a nice way to relax together, and the stars, stickers and chosen age are saved on your own device.