Snowman, the small studio behind award-winning iOS video games Alto’s Adventure, Alto’s Odyssey, Skate City and others, is spinning out a brand new firm, Pok Pok, that may deal with academic youngsters’s leisure. Later this month, Pok Pok will debut its first title, Pok Pok Playroom, geared toward inspiring artistic considering via play for the preschool crowd.
The launch takes Snowman again to its roots as an app maker, not a video games studio.
In truth, the corporate’s first iOS app, Checkmark, had been within the productiveness house, providing location-based reminders to iPhone customers. But Snowman later shifted to creating video games, tapping into the demand for cellular video games with early launches like Circles and Super Squares. But it wasn’t till Alto’s Adventure got here out that Snowman actually kicked off its foray into gaming.
“We’ve never really considered Snowman to be a video game studio,” explains Snowman co-founder and artistic director Ryan Cash. “A lot of people would assume that because it’s really all that we’re known for at the moment. It’s kind of our core business. But we like to think of ourselves more as like a team of tinkerers who like working on creative stuff. And for now, it happens to be video games, but you never know kind of what might be around the corner,” he says.
Image Credits: Snowman
Pok Pok truly emerged from Snowman’s tradition of tinkering.
Snowman workers Mathijs Demaeght and Esther Huybreghts, now Pok Pok design director and artistic director, respectively, went on the lookout for an app to entertain their younger son James when he was a toddler. They quickly discovered that there weren’t many choices that match what they’d been hoping to search out.
They had wished one thing that wouldn’t rile him up, one thing that wasn’t too technical and one thing that wasn’t gamified, Esther explains.
When they later had their second son, Jack, they determined to simply constructed the app they wished for themselves. After exhibiting a tough prototype to Ryan, he noticed the potential and advised them to run with it.
Ryan’s sister, Melissa Cash, whose background was in creating merchandise at Disney for infants and toddlers, had been serving to with the Alto’s Odyssey launch on the time. When she noticed what Esther and Mathijs have been engaged on, she was impressed.
Image Credits: Snowman
“I’ve worked in the kid space for five years, and I’ve never seen anything that’s even remotely like this. And then, I just knew this is what I wanted to work on for the next 20 years,” she says. Melissa grew to become concerned with the venture and is now CEO of the Pok Pok spinout.
Although legally a particular entity, Pok Pok stays intently tied to Snowman.
“We’ve been incubating the company within Snowman. We moved desks to a corner and we all work together as mentor, colleagues, and collaborate as a group,” Melissa notes. Ryan remains to be concerned, as effectively. “Ryan is everything — our advisor, our helper — we haven’t even come up with a title for him,” she provides.
Today, the Pok Pok workforce is six full-time workers, however works with contractors and educators on its initiatives. Snowman, in the meantime, is over 20 folks, principally in Toronto. However, some Snowman workers spend 30% to 50% of their time on Pok Pok, Ryan says.
For the time being, Pok Pok is self-funded due to Snowman’s success on different fronts, which not solely consists of the Alto’s collection, but in addition Apple Arcade’s Where Cards Fall and Skate City, each of which are actually increasing to PC and console. The firm can also be engaged on DISTANT, a collaboration with Slingshot and Satchel.

Pok Pok Playroom, which is geared toward children ages two to 6, would be the first title to go reside from Pok Pok, arriving on May 20. The app itself will initially comprise six “digital toys,” so to talk, which encourage children to creatively play. These toys additionally develop with the kid as they age up.
For instance, a stacking blocks toy may enchantment to toddlers who simply wish to transfer the shapes round, however an older youngster may construct a city with them. A drawing toy can encourage scribbles at youthful ages or turn into an actual canvas for artwork when the kid is older. There’s additionally a chilled toy known as “musical blobs” that’s type of like a lava lamp with in a different way formed blobs that bounce round and reply to touches.
All the toys are designed to be open-ended — there’s no proper or improper approach to make use of them. And Pok Pok Playroom shouldn’t be a recreation. There are not any ranges to beat or aims to attain. There’s nothing to purchase.
What is completely different about Pok Pok Playroom, in contrast with video games and “digital toys” from rivals like Toca Boca, for instance, is that it’s designed to be extra academic and sensible.
“We take a more educational approach, and we still plan to do that for future apps and for whatever Pok Pok Playroom will grow into after launch,” says Esther. “For example, we have no unicorns or no wizards in Pok Pok Playroom. Everything is grounded in reality. I think we want to explore with children what the world looks like and how it works. We have tons of ideas for taking a more education-based approach for all the children, as well, that isn’t necessarily the ABCs, 1,2,3’s pedagogical, so to speak.”
Image Credits: Snowman
Pok Pok additionally received’t use speaking animals or fantasy characters as a way to keep away from the topic of variety. Instead, its apps will options all races, all genders, all household constructs, all differing types of talents and disabilities, as they’re constructed.
“I think it’s very important to us to have kids be able to recognize themselves, and family members and friends in the app,” says Esther. “It’s really important to our entire team that everyone feels respected in who they are and what their family looks like, and… I think that’s still really lacking in the kid space right now. We want to be the front-runner there,” she notes.
The new app, which has been in growth for almost three years, will probably be priced on a subscription foundation, with extra “digital toys” added over time.

Though Pok Pok will intention extra on the preschool crowd, the corporate envisions a future the place it designs artistic initiatives for the subsequent age group up and for different varieties of studying.
Pok Pok Playroom has been beta examined with round 250 households forward of its launch.
It will probably be accessible on iPhone and iPad beginning on May 20 at 9 a.m. ET, with a 14-day free trial. It will then be priced at $3.99 per thirty days or $29.99 per 12 months, and won’t function in-app purchases.