for the grown-up

Gather is snow and a pair of hands. There is nothing to win here, so there is no way to lose.

what your child can do

• Push it about. A whole hand works better than one finger, and the snow stays wherever they shove it.
• Hold still, and the snow gathers into a ball under their hand.
• Drag that ball along and it grows, the way rolling snow really does.
• Let go while their hand is still moving, and it flies.
• Rest a ball gently on top of a bigger one and it sits there. Two of them together get a face.
• Or throw it hard instead, and it bursts back into snow with a scatter of stars.

the rule they work out for themselves

A ball will only sit on one at least as big as it is, and a tower has to stay over its base, so a tall one needs a big bottom ball gathered first. Nobody tells them that. They find it with their hands, and that is why they believe it.

why it is built this way

There is no score, no timer, no badge and no well done, because none of those are the child playing, they are the toy marking the child. A tower that falls over is just the world being honest, and nothing is taken away when it does. What their hands do is the only thing that moves anything here, and whatever they make stays made until they change it.

It is silent on purpose. Nothing chimes, nothing congratulates, nothing asks them to go faster, and it can sit quietly beside a sleeping baby.

It keeps working with the wifi off.

what it is for

Cause and effect that is worth the name. A gentle hand drifts the snow and a hard sweep throws it, so what they do maps to what happens, and the snow remembers it. Ten minutes of a small person's work is right there in the shape of the field, which is a different feeling entirely from a thing that makes a noise when you touch it.

What is kept, and what this asks of your device, is written plainly on the privacy page.

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