For parents and teachers
Everything a grown-up would reasonably want to know before handing a child this game, written without marketing language. If you only read one section, read the safety one.
The short safety summary
- There is no chat. No messaging, no comments, no forums, no usernames visible to anyone else. Your child cannot be contacted by another player, because there are no other players.
- There is nothing to buy. No in-app purchases, no subscription, no premium currency, no loot boxes. Coins and gems are earned by playing and cannot be bought.
- No account is required. The game works immediately with no sign-up, no email address, and no name beyond a nickname the child picks for their character.
- We do not ask children for personal information. Not their real name, age, school, email, photo or location.
- Advertising is non-personalised. Because this site is directed at children, ads are served without behavioural profiling and without personalised targeting. Details are below.
- Ads are never inside the game. They appear only on these information pages, which are written for adults. There are no ads on the play screen, no video ads, no ads for a reward.
How advertising works here
Curious Koko is free and has no paid tier. Hosting, database and domain costs are paid for by advertising displayed through Google AdSense on the site's information pages.
Because the site is directed at children, it is tagged for child-directed treatment. In practice that means:
- Ads are served on a non-personalised basis. They are chosen from the content of the page and coarse, non-identifying signals — not from a profile of your child's browsing.
- No advertising cookie or identifier is used to build an interest profile of the user.
- Remarketing and interest-based targeting are disabled.
- Ad categories are restricted to those suitable for a family audience.
Non-personalised ads still use a cookie or similar identifier for basic purposes such as frequency capping, aggregated reporting and fraud prevention. Our cookie policy explains exactly which ones and how to refuse them, and the privacy policy covers the legal detail.
If you would rather your child saw no ads at all, the reliable answer is a content blocker at the browser or network level; the game itself will keep working normally.
What data the game holds
Deliberately very little. The full list, and the legal basis for each item, is in the privacy policy; here is the plain version.
| What | Why | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| A nickname your child types for their character (e.g. "Ari") | So siblings sharing a tablet each get their own progress | The browser; and the database if you sign in |
| Game progress — stars, coins, materials, which quests are done, what's been crafted, the outfit Koko is wearing, where she is standing | So the game resumes where it left off | The browser; and the database if you sign in |
| An anonymous, randomly generated account ID | To attach that progress to a save slot. It is not linked to a person and we cannot identify anyone from it | Firebase Authentication |
| A Google account email and display name — only if a grown-up chooses to sign in with Google | So progress follows the child to another device | Firebase Authentication |
We ask children to use a nickname rather than their real name, and nothing in the game requires or checks a real identity. We do not collect location, contacts, photos, microphone or camera. The game does not use the device's camera even though there is an in-game "polaroid" — those photos are drawn by the game, not taken by a camera.
Should I sign in?
You do not have to, and most families should not bother. Without signing in, everything is stored in the browser on that one device and never leaves it. The trade-off is that clearing the browser's site data, or switching to a different tablet, loses the progress.
Signing in with Google — which should be done by you, with your account, not the child's — mirrors progress to a database so it survives a device change. It is the only feature that sends anything off the device beyond ordinary web-server logs.
Setting up siblings
One device can hold several players. From the main menu, "Add an adventurer" creates a new profile with its own nickname, its own progress, its own Koko and its own wardrobe. Switching between them takes two taps and no password. It is designed for a shared family tablet, not for security — any child on the device can switch to any profile.
Using it in a classroom
Curious Koko is free to use in schools, clubs and libraries; no licence is needed, and you do not need to tell us.
- It runs in any modern browser with no install, which usually clears the IT hurdle.
- It works offline after the first load, so a room with poor Wi-Fi is fine. Progress saves locally and syncs later if signed in.
- Add it to the home screen on a tablet and it launches full-screen, without browser chrome for a child to wander out of.
- For shared classroom devices, do not sign in with Google — leave it anonymous, and use a profile per child.
- The curriculum page lists every quest against a skill and a year group, which is the quickest way to find the four or five quests matching what you are teaching this week.
If your school's policy requires a data-processing summary before pupils use a site, the privacy policy is written to answer that; email me if you need something more formal.
Session length and screen time
Quests are built to be finishable. Each one is two to four minutes, and each ends on a clear result — one, two or three stars — rather than trailing off. There is no daily streak to protect, no energy bar that refills on a timer, no notification, and no penalty for stopping. The one time-based mechanic is a daily gift chest with a 24-hour cooldown, which grants coins and materials; ignoring it costs the child nothing they cannot earn by playing.
This matters because a natural stopping point every few minutes is the difference between "one more quest and then dinner" and an argument.
Deleting everything
Two ways, both immediate:
- Not signed in: clear the browser's site data for this site (or use your browser's "clear browsing data" for this site only). That is the entirety of it — nothing remains anywhere.
- Signed in: delete the player from the main menu to remove that child's progress, and email me at me@saurabhsrivastava.dev to have the whole account and every record attached to it erased. I will do it and confirm, at no charge.
You do not need to give a reason, and you do not need to prove anything beyond control of the account. See your rights in the privacy policy.
What it needs to run
Any browser released in the last few years: Chrome, Edge, Safari or Firefox, on a laptop, Chromebook, iPad or Android tablet. A phone works but is cramped — the game is designed for a tablet held in landscape or a laptop screen. There is no download and no app store.
Controls are arrow keys or WASD on a keyboard, and an on-screen joystick that appears automatically on a touch device.
Questions
Curious Koko is made by one person, and questions from parents and teachers get answered personally. If something is wrong, if an answer key looks incorrect, or if you want a child's data removed, write to me@saurabhsrivastava.dev — see the contact page.