For grown-ups

what it teaches, how to play it, and a card for every expedition

What it teaches

Curious Kea is a story game about how we know things: what do I think, where did that come from, how sure am I, how would I find out, and what would change my mind. Not a list of facts to remember, though children pick up plenty along the way (why seasons happen, how a footprint can be a witness, how a boulder ends up under the wrong mountain). The facts are the scenery. The habit is the point.

Each expedition walks the same loop in story: claim, where-from, Sure-o-Meter, predict-then-check, update, Wonder Log. Kea's theories are wrong in entertaining ways, Rock keeps records and only ever reports what it saw, and your child adjudicates. Nobody in the story is an oracle. Every character has a source, not an authority, and the crew compares sources ("she saw it; he was told; I guessed") rather than status.

Patches reward the moves, never being right first: Said "I'm not sure", Asked a great question, Checked it myself, Caught a mistake, Changed my mind. Changing your answer after evidence earns more than being right straight away. Sticking to your theory after the evidence is allowed too. Rock's line: "You may keep the theory. The evidence stays too."

How to play it with a child

• Ages. Written for 7 to 10 and fine above that. Two trails, chosen in the game's settings: the main trail (the whole story) and the high route (the same story with a few extra beats for careful older thinkers: layers in mud, a direction from a scratch, saying a rough number honestly). Nothing in the game mentions ages.
• Time. Twelve to twenty minutes an expedition, in three or four scenes. The game saves at every scene break, so stopping halfway is fine.
• Reading. The words write themselves out at reading pace and wait for the reader; a tap finishes a line early. A confident six-year-old manages the main trail; a slower reader will want you beside them for the first one.
• Together or alone. Both work. Together is better the first time: the choices are made to be talked about, and the best moments are when a child argues with Kea.
• Afterwards. Every card below ends with a home experiment (nothing you need to buy) and two or three questions to talk about. The Wonder Log in the game keeps a page from every finished expedition, in the child's own choices.

What it will never do

• no ads
• no accounts
• nothing collected
• no chat
• works offline

Progress, patches and the Wonder Log live on your device and never leave it. Moving to a new device is a "pack up" and "unpack" of one file, and the file goes only where you put it. The privacy page says the rest in plain words.

The expeditions

One card per expedition: what happens (with spoilers), the thinking your child practised, words they may come home saying, the home experiment, and what to talk about afterwards. Printable.

Questions, corrections, ideas

Write to [email protected]. A person reads it. If a card gets a fact wrong, that is exactly the kind of thing the crew would want to know.