10+ Games

Ten-plus short, positive mini-games for kids 6+ — in one Kids Category app.

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Inspiration

My son Ki is nine. He fills notebooks with game ideas — worlds, characters, rules, scribbled maps, and notes like “didn’t come up with a name yet.” I build software. We treated those pages as a real product backlog.

The idea was simple: one Kids Category app with ten-plus short, positive mini-games, instead of ten separate downloads. Kids (and parents) get variety without the hunt. Ki gets to see a sketch become something you can actually play.

That’s how 10+ Games started.

What it does

10+ Games is a hub of short, bright, calming mini-games for kids 6+ and families — one download, ten-plus ways to play on iPhone and iPad.

Open the app, pick a game, play for a few minutes, try another. The catalog mixes arcade, fidget-style calm play, and same-device two-player:

  • Space Heroes — fly a starship through debris and dock at the station
  • Cosmic Match — match planets and stars; pick up real space facts along the way
  • Gold Defense, Food Defense, Body Defense — light tower-defense from Ki’s notebook (a Mars gold mine, a fruit army vs. junk food, immune cells protecting the heart)
  • Stone Stack, Space Ants, Draw Together — tactile, low-stakes play
  • Maze Runner and Mars Sprint — races, including two people on one device

No account. Progress stays on the device. No third-party ads or tracking. The only purchase is a one-time Unlock Everything IAP ($4.99), powered by RevenueCat.

tenplusgames.com · App Store

How we built it

Ki designs. Dad ships. He sketches and writes the rules; I turn them into SwiftUI games inside a single native hub.

The iOS app (net.10plusgames) is SwiftUI + SwiftData:

  • A game hub (Featured / Play Now / Locked / Coming Soon) so the catalog feels like a growing world
  • A Shop tab with one non-consumable: net.10plusgames.unlockeverything
  • RevenueCat for offerings, the unlock_all_games entitlement, restore, and receipt sync
  • A parental gate before any purchase or outbound link (Apple Kids Category / Guideline 1.3)
  • Local-only save data, Reduce Motion / High Contrast, and skippable first-play tutorials

The website is a small Next.js site for parents (about, privacy, support) — not a web game client. Kids play in the native app.

Monetization is intentionally simple: one price, one entitlement, no coin packs, no timed offers, no pay-to-win.

Challenges we ran into

Kids Category is a different product, not a checkbox. No third-party ad networks, no analytics SDKs, no behavioral targeting, no open chat. That forced a first-party, privacy-first architecture from day one.

Commerce without dark patterns. A nine-year-old should never “accidentally” buy something. Purchases live on their own Shop tab, behind a gate a young child is unlikely to pass — a random multiplication prompt, not a birthday we store:

$$ a \times b = ? \quad a,b \in {4,\ldots,9} $$

Easy for a parent; not everyday mental math for ages 6–8. Wrong answer does nothing. We don’t persist a “remember this parent” bypass.

Ten games, one quality bar. A hub dies if one title feels like a prototype next to a polished one. Sessions stay short (about 1–3 minutes), controls stay obvious, and failure stays kind — knocking over a stone stack is the joke, not a punishment.

One IAP that actually means everything. Mapping a single non-consumable onto every locked title, restore, and offline entitlement state is harder than a “remove ads” button. RevenueCat’s entitlement model is what made that honest: buy once, unlock_all_games is on, the hub updates.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Shipped a real Kids Category app — first public version live on the App Store (August 25, 2026), not a prototype.
  • Ten playable mini-games in one download, several of them (Food Defense, Body Defense, Gold Defense) taken straight from Ki’s notebook.
  • A parent-trustworthy business model: no account, no trackers, no third-party ads, one transparent Unlock Everything purchase via RevenueCat.
  • Same-device play that actually fits a couch or a car ride — two people, one iPhone or iPad, no friend codes.
  • A site parents can read (tenplusgames.com/about) that tells the real story: games from Ki’s notebook, built with Dad.

What we learned

  • Kids are the best design partners and the strictest QA. If Ki can’t explain a game from his own drawing, the rules aren’t simple enough.
  • Calm and fun can live in the same app. Some games are fidget toys. Some are arcade. The hub is the product.
  • Trust is a feature. Parents care about Kids Category, no account, no trackers, and a one-time unlock they can understand in one sentence.
  • Ship the notebook. The games that feel most like us came off Ki’s pages. The hard part isn’t ideas. It’s finishing them with the same kindness they were drawn with.

What's next for 10+ Games

The notebook isn’t empty. That’s the point of a hub named 10+.

Next up: more of Ki’s sketches as playable titles (including Kite Race and a small two-player collection), more same-device co-op, and keeping the catalog feeling like one bright world instead of a pile of demos. We’ll keep Unlock Everything as the only IAP — when new games ship, they’re included.

Ki keeps drawing. Dad keeps building.

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