Do you have young ones at home? Or do you simply live in a world where language and phonetics are touchable, colorful, dreamlike living things? Either way, be sure you have not missed Metamorphabet.
Vectorpark’s Metamorphabet is a delightfully-vivid alphabet game, where letters morph and come to life under your touch (it shines on a tablet, but the Windows and Mac versions have just come out). Try the first few letters for yourself and you’ll see it’s creative fun for all ages—shaking the antlers sprouted by the letter “A”, or plucking butterfly after butterfly out of the beak of the letter “B”, is timelessly delightful.
Importantly, though, this game performs the magic trick of being inviting to children without being either condescending or overstimulating. I see a lot of kids on public transit prodding that candy-crunching Cut the Rope alien thing and I am always this close to swooping down upon their parents and going that one’s bad try a better one try Metamorphabet and so forth.
I remember enjoying this article by my colleague Evan Narcisse on why Metamorphabet was the first game he’d let his four year-old play all by herself.
You can get Metamorphabet, which won the Excellence in Visual Art award at the Independent Game Festival earlier this year, on PC, Mac, iOS and through Steam, for $4.99.