Meadowlark
Meadowlark
Browser games · ages 8 to 13

They think they're just playing.

These are history games for kids, with a real curriculum hidden inside a town the player built. Nobody sits a test on Victorian public health — they dig the sewers because the rats have arrived, and the newspaper explains why a doctor once blamed a water pump.

One HTML file, opened by double-click. No accounts, no ads, no in-app anything, no data leaving the machine. They run on a kitchen laptop with the wifi switched off.

Free to play Works offline No accounts No ads or tracking Pixel art, hand-assembled
Two games, two real places

Both are set somewhere that actually existed, in a year that actually happened.

1837 — 1901

Little Victoria

Nearly finished

A cosy town builder. You start with a lane and a few cottages and grow a Victorian town across sixty-four years. Twice a year the Little Victoria Gazette lands with something that really happened — and it changes what you are allowed to build.

Dr John Snow traces cholera to a pump in 1854, so the water fountain unlocks. The Great Stink of 1858 puts sewers on the menu, which is also how you deal with the rats your warehouses have been quietly feeding. The Factory Acts arrive and the children in your mills stop being your decision and start being the law's. Meanwhile the gasworks has to keep up with the street lamps, the smog thickens with every factory, and a scarlet-coated rat-catcher walks the lanes.

  • 129 real news stories
  • Ages 8+
  • Saves in the browser
  • Seasons, day & night
Play Little Victoria →
1776 — 1791

The Printer's Daughter

In development

A story game on Market Street, Philadelphia. You are the daughter of a printer. You mind the shop the night the Declaration comes off Dunlap's press, live through the British occupation with an officer billeted in the parlour, watch the Continental dollar die one price chart at a time, and set the type for the Bill of Rights.

Five chapters play end to end: the Dunlap broadside and the paper count, Thomas Paine and the folding puzzle, the occupation and Lydia Darragh's walk, the price of bread, and the two thousand shirts. Five more are written and not yet built.

A companion to Tuttle Twins America's History, Volume 2.

  • 5 of 10 chapters playable
  • Ages 8–13
  • Long way to go
No public build yet
Vaderville in September 1859 — a stone market square, terraced houses, a clock tower on the green, 322 townsfolk. The same town at night in September 1862 — gas lamps lit, a hedge maze in the park, brick terraces along the high street, 432 townsfolk.

The same town three years apart: Vaderville in 1859, and again in 1862 with the gas lamps lit and 432 townsfolk instead of 322. The game frames a postcard of the current view whenever a player asks for one, dated and counted, and pins it in the scrapbook in the Town Almanac.

More are coming, and the next one may not be history at all. The method travels: any subject a child can be curious about can be built into a place they run.

How the teaching hides

Three rules the games follow.

The lesson is a mechanic

Nothing is explained that could be played instead. A child does not read a paragraph about public sanitation; a child builds three warehouses, gets rats, and works out what a sewer is for.

Questions come afterwards, and they pay: the Gazette's Quiz Corner is worth £150 to a kid who was paying attention.

History arrives as news

Not a syllabus — a newspaper. The Gazette turns up twice a year with a real story from that year, and the story is why the new building appeared on the menu this morning.

A player who founds a town in 1837 and takes it to the Diamond Jubilee has read 129 things that actually happened, in order, because each one changed what they could do next.

The choice comes before the consequence

Kids get to be wrong. You can put off the gasworks another decade and let the street lamps go dark. You can take paper dollars for the last ream in the shop and find out in the spring what they were worth.

Consequences are legible, not punishing. Nothing ends the game; the town keeps going and the town crier tells you, kid-sized, what needs attention.

What they actually come away with

The left column is what a kid does. The right is what stuck.

Unlocking the water fountain after 1854
How one doctor’s map of a cholera outbreak changed a city
Digging sewers after the Great Stink of 1858
That a city is a system, and that the smell was data
Sending children into the mill, then meeting the Factory Acts
What a law changes that good intentions did not
Deciding whether to take paper or silver from a customer
The difference between money and a promise
Watching the shop’s price chart climb through 1779
Why money printed without limit stops buying bread
Setting the type for the Bill of Rights, line by line
What the first ten amendments actually say
Reading the Gazette’s yearly report card on their own town
How to read a chart about something you caused
For parents and teachers

What you are actually installing: nothing.

Each game is a single HTML file. Double-click it and it opens in Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Edge. There is no launcher, no store, no update, and no server — the whole game, art and music included, is inside that one file, and it plays with the wifi off.

The games are free and will stay free. They exist to be used, not monetised, and nothing about them changes if nobody ever sends a satoshi.

  • No accounts and no sign-in. Progress saves in the browser on your own machine.
  • No ads, no tracking, no telemetry. Nothing about your child leaves the computer, because nothing is sent anywhere.
  • No purchases of any kind. There is nothing to unlock with money — only with years.
  • Reading level 8+. Younger children play Little Victoria happily with a grown-up reading the Gazette aloud.
  • Curriculum-friendly. The Printer's Daughter follows Tuttle Twins America's History, Volume 2, chapter for chapter.
  • Open art, credited. Every sprite is Liberated Pixel Cup work from OpenGameArt, licensed CC-BY-SA, with the credits shipped inside the game.
If it was worth something

Support is in sats, or not at all.

The Printer's Daughter spends a whole chapter on what happens to a family when the money is printed faster than the bread is baked. It would be a strange thing to teach a child and then pass the hat in the same kind of money.

So the ask is bitcoin. Nothing sits in between: no processor to approve it, no chargeback, no account to freeze, no permission needed at either end. That is the part that matters here — not the price.

The games are free and will stay free. This is a tip jar for people whose kid got something out of it, not a paywall wearing a costume.

Lightning
jasonbohio@getalby.com

A lightning address: paste it into any lightning wallet. Any amount, down to a handful of sats.