Honest, Free Games for Kids. Built by a Dad.

It began the way it does for most families: school homework moved to an app, and suddenly our kids had phones in their hands.

Then came music apps and language practice. That was our first wake-up call: in the modern app world, ‘free’ rarely actually means free. It almost always means invasive data tracking and a relentless stream of adverts no parent would ever willingly approve.

Before a family holiday, the kids asked for a couple of travel games. My wife and I sat down to help them choose, expecting to find at least some apps offering simple, honest and clean fun.

Instead, we found an absolute minefield:

Children’s natural curiosity was being treated as a commodity to track and monetise. It felt completely unjust. In our opinion, kids just need to play—without being targeted by a digital ad machine.

After so much searching and failing to find apps that we trusted, I decided to build an alternative.

From our home in Surrey, I started coding a small collection of simple, wholesome games. Puzzles and challenges we could play together or that the kids could enjoy solo. I built in simple parental controls to manage screen time and access, alongside adjustable difficulty settings so the games could adapt to their abilities and offer genuine, healthy achievement.

My children became my chief testers, idea generators, and harshest critics.

With a test app installed we started playing the games out and about—both as a family and with friends—other parents loved the concept and asked if they could also have the app. That gave us the push to make them freely available, launching first on Android while we weigh up Apple’s hefty annual developer fees for a free passion project.

All we needed was an identity.

Naturally, the kitchen table brainstorm began. After running through dozens of wonderfully weird ideas, the kids unanimously picked the winner:

Pumpkin Cat Games was born.