Globe Trotter

Globe Trotter is a world geography game for children from four to ten, played on a bright hand-drawn map with chunky outlines, a compass rose and a little red plane with a friendly face. Pick 4+, 6+ or 8+ on the title screen. At 4+ there is nothing to read: a postcard shows the shape of a continent and an animal that lives there, such as a kangaroo for Australia, a penguin for Antarctica or an elephant for Africa, and the plane flies wherever you tap. The youngest players also carry six animals home to their continents, find the sea for a lost whale and play flag memory.

At 6+ the continent cards lose their colour clues, the oceans get their names and 36 country flags join in: see a flag, then tap the right country on the map. At 8+ the seven continents are named in English, every flag comes with three cities to pick the capital from, and eight landmarks wait to be dragged to their country: the Eiffel Tower, the pyramids, Big Ben, the Sydney Opera House, the Taj Mahal, the Statue of Liberty, the Colosseum and the Great Wall. The map pans and zooms with a pinch or the plus and minus buttons, and every target is big enough for small fingers.

Nothing is ever lost. A wrong guess just wobbles and plays a soft sound, and after two tries the right answer lights up. A round is ten quick questions and ends with confetti, a fanfare and a new stamp for the passport sticker book, while a learned meter for each age climbs as the brain soaks up the world. There is a daily round with its own dated stamp and gentle music-box tunes to relax to, and all progress stays on your own device.