Developmental (FEDC-informed)
RecessPals
Someone wouldn’t play with you today? Rocco the recess raccoon helps you be a detective: find THREE reasons why (there’s almost always more than one!), size how big it felt, pick one thing to try tomorrow — and unlock a bedtime card with two questions and a floor-time idea for your grown-up. Big buttons, read-aloud help, nothing saved.
▶ Play it nowBuilt for sittings of about 15 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.
Mentored by Tortle
#c2410c Characters who teach
Meet the cast
RecessPals's recess crew each embody one way to handle a friendship bump. Rocco the raccoon finds more than one reason why, Tortle asks how big it felt before anything else, and Corkie, Waverly, Wimble and Dabney are the four things you can try tomorrow.
Rocco
looks for more than one reason why a friend did something
Read chapter →
Tortle
asks how big it felt, and takes a slow breath first
Read chapter →
Corkie
A blue jay who asks to join a game by bringing an idea
Read chapter →
Waverly
A puppy who finds another friend to play with
Read chapter →
Wimble
A squirrel who starts her own game and invites everyone
Read chapter →
Dabney
A bunny who tells a grown-up how it felt
Read chapter →
Browse all chapters → · What's distributed-narrative methodology? →
What's inside
Learning goal
Someone wouldn’t play with you today? Rocco the recess raccoon helps you be a detective: find THREE reasons why (there’s almost always more than one!), size how big it felt, pick one thing to try tomorrow — and unlock a bedtime card with two questions and a floor-time idea for your grown-up. Big buttons, read-aloud help, nothing saved.
Mentored by Tortle — no data leaves the device.
How RecessPals 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
For you, the grown-up
The grown-up side of RecessPals on Spark & Whetstone, our free site for grown-ups: Answering a Why. They find three reasons why; you answer the bedtime questions it unlocks.
RecessPals 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
RecessPals 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